


Not Exactly My Type

by LizzyDizzyYo



Series: Not Exactly My Type (Typesign/Omegaverse Series) [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Asexual Character, Asexuality, Asian Character(s), Dubious Consent, F/M, First Time, Gen, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, I update every friday and/or sunday 3PM GMT in case you guys are wondering, Latino Character, M/M, Medical Inaccuracies, Medical Trauma, Mpreg, Realistic, Romance, so many tags holy shit
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-03
Updated: 2017-08-10
Packaged: 2018-09-21 17:53:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 16
Words: 43,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9560357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LizzyDizzyYo/pseuds/LizzyDizzyYo
Summary: Nathaniel Khiem Leighton lives a good life. He has prominent family living in New York, a great acting, modelling, and musical career, a wonderful boyfriend, and relatively comfortable life. Really, he does. The fact that he’s biologically not supposed to exist within the carefully constructed society of typesigning does not affect his life. He’s learned to live with it without anyone but family and very trusted confidantes knowing, and he’s damn good at dealing with problems that arise because of it.But sometimes, people slip up.Now he needs to learn to navigate the life he’s thrust into that he’s never thought he’s ever going to live for himself with problems outside what his wildest imaginations would ever invent. He has to learn new kinds of joy, fear, pain, heartbreak, appreciation, and love in the most unlikely way.Hopefully, he’ll still get the happy ending he envisions.*On-break explanation and next chapter announcement in the latest chapter*





	1. Prologue

The world is full of diverse kind of people. And unnecessarily so. Sometimes Nate wonders why that is.

Not that he is being racist. Not at all. He is half-Asian after all. No, he isn’t talking about the ethnic or racial diversity. That he has no problem with.

It’s the type diversity that he has problem with. You know, with the Alpha-Beta-Omega type diversity stuff.

Like, they already have male and female sexual diversity which is enough trouble as it is in the world (and men, women, and non-binary gender diversity, too, don’t forget that). He wonders why Mother Nature has to multiply that problem. Types don’t even have that much difference from each other, as far as the scientific world is aware of. (Some people and activist groups even push for the erasure of typesigning in the world to rid the world of further reason to discriminate, which is extreme, but he can get behind that movement, to be honest).

Seriously, he’s met a lot of Alpha men and Beta men and he literally couldn’t tell the difference. Not until they explicitly said, “Oh, by the way, I’m Alpha/Beta.” It is the same case with women (or non-binary people). He literally hardly ever could tell if any that he’s met is Alpha, Beta, or Omega.

Sure, some past scientific findings and researches have led to the knowledge and the general consensus that certain types have certain characteristics, but it’s already 2017, for God’s sake. If you come into a room full of physiologists or biologists and tell them those ‘general consensus’, for example about how Alphas are characterized with aggressive and dominant personality and Betas are characterized with pacifist and escapist personality and Omega don’t have backbone, they’d laugh so hard they’d probably get heart attack and die.

It’s literally the same case with gender discrimination and sexism. And it is very bad for Omega women (also for Alpha men, since sometimes, detailed and mostly high-paying jobs won’t land in front of them in fear of them being too aggressive and unstable for the jobs, but that’s rarer).

Biologically speaking, there is also almost no difference. If there are some researches that state some types are only compatible for certain others, that can still be helped with how much further the technology has progressed. Alpha women may be proven several times to have harder time conceiving (but are stronger to carry a baby until delivery, at least that’s what he’s heard), but nowadays, even Omega women don’t always want children, and neither do some Beta women. And that works well for their male partners (or female or non-binary).

Even if they do want children and have a hard time conceiving (which also happens to Omega women and Beta women, surprise, surprise), they can go to gynecologists to undergo some fertility treatment or get some help for the conceiving. If the problems lies on the men, they can get some assistance too. And those beliefs about certain type only compatible with another? That’s also already proven to be capital BS, too. At least for the general, almost 98% of the population of the world. And really, biological compatibility mostly lies on personal and individual characteristics, which is also proven to be true and automatically debunks the previous researches about types’ compatibility.

Sure there are some heat process differences between the types, but even those are minor differences. They only lie in the feeling (which he wouldn’t know since he only knows how his own type’s heat feels, like how everybody else does) and the frequency (with Omegas having it more frequently than Alphas and Betas, and Betas having it the least. Again though, the difference is not that big; the gap time between each heat for the types only differ in, like, one or two weeks).

They’re literally the only noticeable legit and biological differences between the types. And who in their right mind would even peer on each other while they are in heat unless they’re your partners or something? You’ll probably get charged with sexual harassment and a restraining order slapped on your wrists if you do that.

There is literally no merit in continuing typesigning in the world. It’s literally just like a goddamn blood type. Or even zodiac. Even blood type has some kind of use (you know, for transfusion and all), and zodiac is kind of entertaining. What the hell is the point of typesign?

There is already an abundance of scientific studies and researches, credible ones at that, which basically state that typesign means nothing in the world, and yet there are hundreds and hundreds of cultures in the world that still rely on it for its social structures, making Omega women suffer the most in the hand of their usually Alpha fathers and (unwanted) Alpha husbands. Beta and Alpha women get the brunt of it too, being seen as undesirable. Beta men usually also get rejected over and over again with the belief that they’re not going to be compatible and will not result in plenty of children they can play as family pawns. For Alpha men? Well, they don’t get that much disadvantage, to be honest, but they might be forced to uphold certain (useless and sometimes masochistic) standards and to marry to produce the said family pawns.

And, again, this is 2017. He can’t believe some cultures still live with those craps.

Thankfully, none of those will really affect him (although he sympathizes, especially towards his Omega girl friends and _girlfriends_ , who he had and who were promptly surprised that he somehow treated them with respect as if their types don’t mean that much). After all, of all the debates surrounding typesign, none really concerns his kind. As far as the world is concerned, he is just a myth. And he’d like to keep it that way.

He doesn’t think, at least from what he’s seen of the world and of his environments, people are ready for the otherworldly contradiction that is Omega men.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> YOU'VE REACHED THE END, YAYYY!!!!
> 
> Okay, so this is my first ever story that I post online and is not in any fandom (not that I post much fanfics anyway, just once). Obviously, this is not going to be perfect but I try to make it as realistic and as best as possible within my ability. This is a pretty tame story, in my opinion. (I know 'cause I've lurked on ao3 for years, and boy, lemme tell ya. This site is wild.) I try to tag as many warnings as possible, but if I miss something, please tell me. 
> 
> Also, I'm looking forward to reviews and constructive criticisms, because I want to do this for fun, but I also want to improve. So let me know what you think of the premise, the writing, and the chapter too (which is now just prologue). I hope you enjoyed this!


	2. Chapter I : Pre-debacle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! I'm so happy with the number of hits I got until now (I know, 36 hits in two days and I'm so excited, that's so lame lol). I even got 2 kudos, which is seriously much more than what I expected for my first chapter of my first story here.
> 
> I was planning to upload it weekly (I will, on Friday around 9AM GMT, after this), but I'm going back to college tommorow, and the response is pretty good for me. So here is the next chapter.
> 
> Again, let me know what you think in the comment. I could use a review or two :D

“Nate!”

He looks up from his thick history of art book he is reading. He whips his head around the half-secluded café near SFO, his favorite when he visits San Francisco, for a while to search for the source of the voice before catching a figure striding straight to him. A smile quickly spreads on his face.

A 6’4” man, two inches taller than himself, with glinting blond hair and light cerulean eyes is walking towards him wearing a fitting grey t-shirt, showcasing his firm and muscular body, and a smile equally wide. That man is currently his favorite person to see right now.

“Hi, Matthew,” he greets back when his boyfriend of 8 month is close enough to half-hug him and kiss him. Matt starts out with a little peck on his lips, but then the hand in the back of his neck starts tangling in his dark brown hair and they get a little more into the kiss. Although Nate isn’t exactly complaining, this is a bit of an open space, and anyone can easily snap a photo of them together and spread it, so he pulls back a little and moves his almost-black metallic grey eyes to the side a little. Matt seems to get the message.

“Sorry, I just miss you a lot. I haven’t seen you in almost a month.”

“Hmm. I miss you too. Sorry the Fall/Winter walk took a bit longer.”

Matt sits across him. “It’s okay. I’m just glad to see you.”

It’s been eight months (and practically a year, if he counted the months of pining on his boyfriend), and he can’t believe his heart still swells like this every time Matt says something sweet. People may not believe it considering how warm and affectionate Matt is, but he is actually Alpha.

See what Nate means? Typesign is just a bunch of crap.

“So, as usual, you’re reading. Again,” Matt says with teasing tone.

“Hey, don’t make fun of my hobby. It actually opens up–“

“–up your mind and makes you understand the world better. Yeah, yeah, I get it. You’re a nerd, a smart nerd.”

Nate swats his arm and pouts while Matt just laughs good-naturedly, crinkling eyes and showing his deep honeyed comforting voice that he loves so much, just like how he loves the rest of him.

“I wouldn’t change a thing about you, you know. Even if you’re a nerd who still reads your textbook even a year after graduating college and possibly making your myopia worse by the days.”

“Ugh, shut up.”

Matt continues laughing softly with Nate rolling his eyes. They stare at each other for a while after that, drinking in the sight of each other that they rarely get to experience in real time.

“So, how long are you staying?”

Nate looks at Matt carefully, his smile falling a bit. He gets himself ready for whatever disappointment is going to be on his 2-year-older boyfriend’s face.

“A week.”

See. There it goes. The face fall that he always tries to conceal.

“I know, I know. I’ve already talked to my agent and my manager, see if they could push some schedules and find wider gaps for me to visit you. I’ve really tried, but they’re adamant that my career should come first and whatever. Not to mention I kinda put my recording process on hold after my surgery and for my runaway walk prep.”

Matt props his head on his right hand, getting into venting-listener mode.

“–And there is still that negotiation for that role in the ‘Vacuum’ thriller movie, you know the one,” Matt nods, “So they said I need to get back into them as soon as I can.”

Matt smiles calmly as if understanding the tension inside Nate’s overdrive and prone-to-worrying mind. He says, “I understand. You’re the busy upscale Hollywood artist and Milan-Paris model. I know what I signed up for.”

Nate opens his mouth to, he doesn’t know, beg for forgiveness that he didn’t try hard enough? Matt raises his hand to shush him.

“No, babe. I’m not mad. Really, I understand. I’m not gonna take your passion and your really brilliant career from you–as long as you take care of yourself, of course–just because I can’t handle being apart from you. That’s not fair to you. I love you, and I support you, you know that.”

“Yeah, but I just–” Nate puts his head onto his hands. For a while he just breathes and berates the universe for this. He’s spent so long to find someone who’s understanding and loving and supportive, but when he does, there is always something.

“Sometimes, I feel like I’m being unfair to you, Matt. I mean, you’ve given a lot and given up so much just by getting into relationship with me.”

“Whoa, Nathan. I do think you’re special but that’s, like, way too self-centered,” Matt teases again.

“Shut up,” he weakly glares, “No, I mean we can’t really be out in the open together like if you were dating someone else or else your pictures are going to be plastered all over the internet and you’ll probably get death threats from my so-called ‘fangirls’, or at least harassed and your privacy aggressively invaded. But even if we can spend time together, it can’t be for long. And on top of that, I’m depriving you–”

“Sshhh. No we’re not going to that direction again, all right? No. You’re not depriving me of anything. I love you, I told you that. Not your ass–although that’s a nice piece, not gonna lie,” Nate rolls his eyes, “so if you don’t want to have sex with me for reasons, that’s absolutely okay. We’ve talked about this.”

“Yeah, but–“

“Ah ah. No buts. I like butts, but not that buts.”

Nate can’t help a snort from surfacing.

“Besides, I wanna talk about something. Concerning that.”

“Butts?”

“No,” Matt gives him a deadpanned look, “About sex.”

“I thought you just said you’re–”

“No, wait, hear me out. No I’m not asking for sex, I know you said you’re ace and you’re not comfortable with it. Nor am I asking for open relationship either. You know both of us wouldn’t be able to handle that. No.”

“So?” Nate tilts his head questioningly.

“I’m gonna be off my suppressants.”

Oh.

Both of them regards each other carefully after that. This time, it’s Matt who looks a bit nervous and kind of afraid, which is mind-boggling. Why would that confession warrant fear?

“Okay…”

“I mean, you know the drill. You can’t suppress your heat for too long even despite medical advancements because it’s not healthy and blah blah blah. And I’ve gone to the doctor, to, you know, pick up my next cycle suppressants, but the doctor was like, ‘No, Matt, I think you should opt out for this one. You’ve suppressed it long enough,’ So, yeah.”

“Why would that be a problem to me?”

Matt looks at him weirdly like he didn’t know that sun rises from the east or something.

“Well, duh. My biology dictates that I’m gonna be a little, well, ‘wild’ a few days from now. I mean, I know that you’re against typesign discrimination and all, but that’s actual science. I’m pretty sure Betas experience it, too.”

He almost blurts out ‘but I’m not Beta, though,’ but he thankfully catches himself.

“So, you know, just in case you want to stay somewhere else this time. Just in case, I lose control. I mean, I’ve suppressed my heats, like, since before we started dating. That’s a lot of pent up energy.”

“Oh,” he says, this time being the one to try to conceal the disappointment. God, he really misses Matt and wants to spend time with him so bad. It also makes him feel guiltier because if he were anybody else, he’d probably help with the heats, just like how partners help with each other’s heats with prior consent. And now Matt is probably going to experience an excruciating heat from the suppressed ones and on top of that, he’s going to deal with it alone even despite having a boyfriend.

“Hey, don’t look so sad. I’m going to be fine. And it’s probably not going to be for another few days. We can still spend time together. I was just saying just in case it comes a little sooner while you’re still here, but it’s probably only for a day or two.”

“Have you started feeling it?”

“A bit. But it’s so minor that I don’t really feel it unless I try to.”

“I can try to–”

“No, you don’t want to, so you can’t. I’m fine, Nathan. I’m a big boy. I can handle a little heat. Everybody can,” Matt says confidently with a soothing smile.

He whips out his Oscar-winning smile, but he has doubt and fear for his boyfriend. He hopes Matt really can handle it since he has never really handled it well.

There is not yet suppressant for Omega men since even the scientific world isn’t even sure they exist. Omega women suppressants are the best for him, but even those don’t really work well, and when they fail, his heat is always messy and painful.

He doesn’t want that for Matt.

* * *

When they arrive at Matt’s apartment, Nathan quickly throws his bag and suitcase to the floor and propels himself onto the giant dark blue beanbag in the living room like he owns the place (though, considering how often he stays here, even before they start dating, he might as well do).

As nice as it is to go out with Matt, he has just gone through a brutal 1 month, right after he had his gastrectomy. He wants a chill time, so he lets out a loud relieved sigh dramatically and lies his head back on the fuzzy seat. Matt’s chuckles reach his ears before he feels the comforting weight of his boyfriend beside him and an arm on his torso.

“This is really niiiice. I can live here forever,” Nate says with his eyes closed, something he always says every time he visits his boyfriend. It honestly becomes a ritual now to say the mantra.

“You practically live here,” Matt says with a deadpanned look, then he nuzzles Nate’s neck and peppers the skin with gentle kisses before saying, “Well, I’d like to move somewhere nicer, to be honest. Like your place.”

“Ugh, it’s too big and alone. I hardly even live there. I just sleep there and get ready for my day.”

“That’s why I can be there, to accompany you and to make it lived in.”

Nate snorts and turn his body a little to lie on his right side facing Matt. “Really? Would you be willing to move to L.A?”

A finger traces gentle circular shapes on the exposed skin of his left arm. He can’t help thinking that the touch feels a bit more intimate than what Matt usually does.

Oh well, it feels nice, anyway.

“I was thinking more like something along the line of your apartment here, in San Francisco.”

Nathan looks a bit deeper at Matt and searches for something in his eyes.

“I’m kidding. I know you don’t like living there. That’s why you rent it out and decide to move in here unofficially,” Matt informs him with a chuckle when he is about to open his mouth. Then Matt gets back to kissing his neck.

His hand trails down from Nate’s arm to his torso, gently caressing the shirt-covered skin there, then it moves again to beneath his arm, between his hand and his waist. The fingers curl a bit and the hand pulls at his waist softly as if to bring Nate closer; as if Matt is not feeling close enough.

Very strange and strangely… nice.

Sure Matt is affectionate but he usually knows to keep his distance physically, especially after Nate’s confession 2 months ago about his ex-boyfriend. Weirdly enough, he feels that he doesn’t really mind this close contact, which is just as unusual as how close Matt is being right now.

“You okay, Matt, darling?”

Matt opens his right eye to peer at Nate. It looks almost drunken and half-lidded, the pupil looking blown wide. Is he on something?

“Hmm, yeah. Totally,” Matt says, his hand moving to clasp Nate’s, “just… miss you.”

Nate can’t help the flutter in his heart and the tilting up of the corner of his lips, all the weird feeling and suspicion gone. God, he loves Matt so much. He always knows how to make him feel special.

Nate really can’t be bothered to give a damn about how unusual Matt is being, or about how suspiciously coincidental it is that Matt has just told him that he’s nearing his next heat cycle. All he knows is that he feels a carnal need for the attention and the touches that Matt has been giving in the last few hours as if this is what has been missing all his life.

Unfortunately, the sweet moment is ruined when his body decides it’s too tired to keep a yawn at bay. He involuntarily opens his mouth so wide and lets out a long winding sound before remembering to put his hand in front of his mouth. Matt bursts out laughing at the scene, and he can’t help the growing warmth on his cheeks.

“Go take a nap, babe. You need it,” he says when he’s done laughing.

Nate looks at Matt blearily for a while before croaking a small ‘okay’. Then he stands up to the direction of the bedroom, but before he can take a step, he feels a firm tug on his hand. He falls back onto the beanbag with a yelp while Matt dives in for a kiss.

“Okay, now you can go take a nap for real,” Matt finally mutters after he’s done kissing him.

Nate just laughs a little and stands up to finally walk to the bedroom this time, throwing a glance over his shoulder on the way to see Matt looking at him with an intense but almost-hypnotized looking expression. He decides not to think too much of it.


	3. Chapter II : The Debacle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You see those warnings on the top? Yeah, those are for this chapter (and probably somewhere down the road, I'll tell ya when we get to it). Technically, it's not _that_ non-con (no, seriously), but from the protag's pov, it's gonna feel like it completely is. So beware, all right? 
> 
> This is also probably the only time I'll write anything remotely sex-related 'cause I'm shit at writing it and I'm ace, so I don't like sex to begin with.
> 
> Anyway, this story just hit 100 _hits_ today (ayyyyyy), and I'm so happy for it, (but just ignore it it's fine lol). Lemme know what you think, and enjoy!

It’s nice to spend time with Matt, Nate knows that, but he can no longer deny that this time, there is something very different. Three days into his stay in San Francisco, he feels impossibly off about everything.

First, it was just small things like Matt who acts a bit more touchy than usual, and him, or at least his body, actually liking it. And then everything sort of progressed fast after that. He even woke up a bit feverish after he had his nap two days ago right after he went out with Matt from SFO. He didn’t tell his boyfriend of course.

Matt looks at him so, so intensely, to the point of looking kind of predatory, and it chills him a little. When he had the chance to have close contact with Matt, once making out with his fingers tangled in his boyfriend’s platinum blond hair (the furthest thing he is currently willing to do with him), the other’s body felt warm to touch. What’s worse is that he cannot comprehend the inexplicable and intangible desire to, he doesn’t know, do something with Matt. What this something is, he truly doesn’t know either.

He searches his weird symptoms (and Matt’s too, at least of what he can see) on the internet and every result suggests that they are going into heat. Which is an absolute crap.

Sure, Matt said that he’s nearing his own cycle, but it’s not for another few days. He saw the cycle calendar beside Matt’s fridge that every medical force person seems to have (though, Matt is a biomedical engineer, not a paramedic), and he looked at the marked dates. If anything, it shouldn’t even come for another two weeks counting from the day he arrived.

As for himself, he had his heat two weeks ago in his Milan hotel room, with burning, aching body and wild inhuman need to do something to himself. He was delirious and in pain, swimming in and out of consciousness, and it was made worse by the fact that the suppressants that he took didn’t work at all. In fact, it seemed to make every sensation, all the itching and burning sensation on his skin and inside his body, felt hundreds times stronger. Not to mention that his lower belly and the part between his legs hurt so bad that he felt like someone was stabbing him repeatedly in the two places at the same time.

It was an absolutely hideous experience, and he relies on the fact that it never came earlier than once every two months the earliest. So, it’s impossible that he’s going to have another heat cycle. It just doesn’t make sense.

He decides to take Matt on an ice cream date. He tells Matt he’s just craving the dairy product after not being allowed to consume any for at least two months around the time of his gastritis. He doesn’t tell Matt that he just feels like cooling his body off since it feels like he’s burning.

Matt just shoots up from the couch like he were a robot on command, not even with a joke, a smile, or an ‘okay’, and quickly walks out of the door.

That is very, very strange and just downright scary. He is not like Matt at all.

Thankfully, Matt regains his usual self to some extent when they are sitting on the ice cream store terrace table. Nate almost moans in relief at the cool wind blowing on his body and the freezing dessert trickling down his throat, but he does close his eyes.

When he opens his eyes again, the intense, almost hungry look is back on Matt’s face.

“What?” he can’t help asking.

Matt doesn’t answer him for almost a minute, but he breathes out soundly and puts down his cup. He then looks back on Nathan. “Are you wearing something?” he suddenly asks, sounding almost accusatory.

Nate straightens up immediately, surprised at the pointed tone and the out-of-the-blue question.

“What?!”

Matt takes a deep breath again and lets it out. He stares at Nate even more intensely than before, and it takes everything inside him not to shrink his body out of intimidation. What is wrong with Matt?

“Nathan, didn’t you notice the way people look at you?”

Nate immediately moves his eyes to scan his surroundings. What is he supposed to look for? He didn’t notice anything.

“Look at them. It’s like they want to ravish you or something, not caring about who you are or whether they recognize you.”

“And I’m supposed to know what to do about it? About the objectifying habit that people have?” Nate can’t help asking incredulously. Is this why he’s been acting strange, that he’s jealous?

“No, I’m not talking about that. It’s like you’re…luring them,” Matt says very seriously, and he has to keep himself from laughing at how stupid it sounds which is way past the stupid (but at least sweet) pick-up lines and cheesy compliments that Matt usually give him.

“Like you’re luring me.”

He stops wanting to laugh then.

“Are you wearing something? Those, I don’t know, enticement perfume that celebs seem to use all the time?”

At that, he wants to throw his spoon at his boyfriend, which he is sure is pretty noticeable on his face.

“Nate, I’m not judging you or condemning you, but you know that’s not entirely legal, right?”

Nate starts to actually fumes inside, but it turns out that that is not enough from Matt.

“And what are you trying to achieve by wearing Omega pheromones perfume? I thought you won’t stoop that low for publicity and attention.”

Okay, that’s enough.

He shoots up from his seat, sending his seat back to the point of almost tumbling down, and throws the most vicious look at his boyfriend.

“I’m not wearing any of those crap, Matt. What the hell?”

He then turns around and walks away from the table, leaving his half-eaten ice cream behind. He can immediately hear the scrapping of Matt’s seat and the fast approaching footsteps of his boyfriend. Not long after, he feels Matt’s fingers circling his wrist.

“Fuck, I’m sorry. That was uncalled for. It’s, uh, my heat, probably, talking. I didn’t mean that,” Matt tells him when he stops striding away.

“I hate typesigning, but I can’t deny it’s right when it comes to your kind, Matt,” he spits out heatedly, suddenly feeling inexplicable adrenaline surging through his body to the point of not caring of his boyfriend’s crestfallen expression, “Learn to take a goddamn responsibility for your 'Alpha-based' actions, will you?”

He whisks his hand away from Matt’s grip and stomps away to their, no,  _Matt’s_  apartment, all alone.

* * *

He almost regrets getting back to Matt’s apartment by himself when he gets there. It’s only a 20-minute walk between the ice cream store and the apartment, and yet, he feels like he’s just done a 10 miles marathon. He’s not out of shape, he knows that. He does his routine work out to strengthen and elongate his breathing every day since he needs it for theater and his music. So why he’s suddenly out of breath, feeling like his chest is being pushed by a ton of bricks, and he feels burning all over, he doesn’t know.

All he knows is that he doesn’t feel like being alone right now.

He wants Matt, or at least, his friends Jack and Jeanne. He would even settle for his demanding agent right now, or his nitpicky manager. Anyone, to help him out, really.

What’s worse is that the longer he observes, the less conscious and aware he feels. His vision swims and the world around him tilts to the side and another over and over again. There is also a growing ache between his thighs.

He doesn’t know what’s going on. He’s scared.

He faintly hears the front door opens and closes, followed by metal jiggling noise and clicking of the lock. There are steps the get louder after that, but they halt in the middle.

Nate opens his eyes after that, and he finds a tall blurry figure on the doorway of the bedroom he is in, and he vaguely feels grateful and relieved because who else can that be if not Matt? He really wants Matt to make it all feel better again like he did around two months ago when he had his stomach ulcer.

“Matthew…” he croaks out weakly.

The steps continue and get louder again. Suddenly, he feels the comforting presence of his boyfriend on his side, although he can’t really see the lines of the figure clearly. Everything is cloudy to him.

“Hey, baby,” Matt says softly to him. He feels fingers gently carding through his hair. He can’t help leaning onto the touch. He’s desperate for any touch right now.

“Matt, what’s wrong with me?” he croaks again pitifully.

“I don’t know, but I know for fact you’re not wearing any kind of enticement perfume, that’s for sure.”

A chuckle sound is heard after that, though it almost sounds desperate and shaky.

“It’s actually from yourself, isn’t it?”

What?

What is from himself?

“Idonnknoow…” Nate slurs.

Matt shudders at that.

“Babe, do you want to go to hospital?”

No. he doesn’t. He doesn’t want to go anywhere. He wants to stay here with Matt. He wants Matt to keep touching him, everywhere.

When he frantically shakes his head, Matt says to him, “Nate, I can’t help you right now. I don’t think you even want me to help you right now.”

He does, he does! Just do something with him, anything. He doesn’t want the doctor. He doesn’t want anyone else.

Nate hears a strained sound coming out of Matt, but he can’t be bothered to care. He just reaches out blindly and take one of Matt’s hand and puts it on his hip. Again, he hears a sharp intake of breath.

He just wants to be comforted. That’s all. He feels like he wants to peel his skin way from his body right now, and he wants to keep inhaling whatever it is that Matt has on his body. It smells so good.

So when Matt pulls back, he crawls to the edge of the bed, letting himself fall to the ground with a thud without registering the pain on his knees, and crawls again to his boyfriend and straddles his lap stutteringly.

“Nate, Nate, stop, babe. I won’t be able to contain myself if you do this.”

He doesn’t care, though. He just wants Matt to touch him everywhere on his body. It feels too hot.

Suddenly he is whirled around on the air and thrown unceremoniously onto the bed again. He’s too shaky to react in timely manner, so before he can do anything, he hears the door slammed shut and there is a click of the lock.

He wails Matt’s name and pleas to for him to come to Nate pathetically until the night when he passes out from exhaustion and the extreme heat of his body.

* * *

When the dawn rolls around, the heat in and on his body has become excruciating, and so are the pains on his lower belly and his perineum. He feels like crying but he’s too exhausted to do anything other than lay there pathetically with damp cheeks and damp pants, letting the wave of the high temperature and the agony wash over him with increasing frequency.

He isn’t sure he was even asleep at all during the day and the night or that he is simply unconscious. He can’t see anything. His glasses are missing and even with glasses, he doesn’t think his eyes and his sight are going to cooperate with him.

He vaguely notices frantic and desperate sounding wood and metal rattling like a rat inside a wall, followed by a clicking sound, which feels so far yet so loud on his overdrive senses. Then there’s a light pouring from a spot below him (doorway?), but the light is also sort of blocked.

Then the blocking disappears and he exhales with closed eyes. He’s too tired.

He is way too delirious and exhausted to fight off the touches on his body. He is warned by an overpowering smell of something strong that's pulling him before a wet sensation is touching his neck and both of his hands are thrown over his head after that.

Why the person decides waste energy holding his hands above him, he doesn’t know. It’s not like he can do anything about it. It’s not like he  _wants_  to do anything about it.

When his obstructing shirt and the thick fabric of his jeans are off his body, he swears he cries out of relief and happiness because finally, those are off. He can’t handle any more of those irritating materials on his skin and everything is too hot and too restrictive on his body. He is also rid of the pooling wetness inside his pants, and he thanks God for the blessing.

There is a comforting weight and warmth above him after that, and he feels something ravenously attacking his lips. He doesn’t fight back. In fact he gives into it and let something that feels like wet tongue enter his mouth.

The hands holding his own finally let go of them and starts to travel downward fast and hungrily. He’s battling himself inside his mind because he vaguely remembers hating to be touched too closely like that, but right now, his body is aching for it. He just lets it happen.

After a long time, the mouth lets go of his own and moves, though never off his skin, to his jaw and his ear and his neck. At the same time, he feels something nudging him between his legs and it feels so excruciating and incredible and absolutely overwhelming. He wants it to stop, but he also wants it to keep going.

So he throws his hands around the neck of the person above him to hold on and he inhales the sweet, sweet smell again, too hungry for it to get enough.

The nudging keeps going and it repeatedly hits his extremely aching perineum, so he bites the shoulder above him and wishes that it gets to where it wants to be soon. It seems that the person above him is in similar hurry because he hears a frustrated groan.

It sounds so familiar, the voice. And the scent too. And the body. But he can’t quite put his finger on it. He vaguely remembers a pair of pale blue eyes and shining blond hair below the sun light, and really, really warm smile that he loves.

He still can’t reach it. It’s somewhere in his brain, he knows, but it’s so hard to touch the memory, and he ceases his attempt when something finally slips inside him in one swift movement above his perineum and pulls out again, then slams back in.

He’s far too gone to have any coherent thought after that.

* * *

When he finally comes to, the first thing he notices is Matt sitting against the wall while hugging his legs in the direct line of his vision. Then he notices the haggard look on his boyfriend’s face.

“Matt?” he asks softly. His throat feels so dry and sore as if he's just spent a week in Sahara desert.

Matt looks at him for a while before his faces crumples, then he says, “Fuck, Nathan, I’m sorry. I swear, I tried.”

“What are you…”

He suddenly winces and hisses so hard when he tries to sit. Matt is immediately by his side, gently holding his back and his sheet-covered thigh.

“What happened?” Nate hisses, his left hand going under the sheet to massage his lower belly. Matt's eyes follow it subtly. He wants to massage his private part too where it actually hurts the most, but he doesn’t feel like doing that in front of his boyfriend.

Matt slowly drags his eyes away from the movement of his hand under the sheet to his eyes. He looks so guilty and broken, and he really doesn’t want that look on his boyfriend’s face.

“Do you remember anything from the last week?”

Nate is puzzled. First because the question, which is a bit out-of-the-blue, second, because, now that he thinks about it, no, he doesn’t. Has it even been a week?

“What date is it?”

Matt gives him an indescribable look, but then he turns around to look at his surrounding, probably looking for something that can tell him what time and what date it is. He finally looks at Nate for a second and squeezes his propped right arm before getting out of the room to look at the calendar in the kitchen.

While Matt is outside, Nate lets himself fall back to the bed and sighs with closed eyes, his left hand finally going south to actually massage his groin.

Then his eyes snaps open. His heart feels like it jumps up and gets lodged in his throat. He is suddenly overcome by nausea.

He takes a shuddering breath and forces himself to calm down.  _It’s nothing, you’re just overreacting,_  he tells himself while he drags his hand up slowly before shakily pulling it up and turning it around to look at his palm.

There is some suspicious pink wetness in the corner of his fingers. His hearts does a somersault in his chest and he truly feels like throwing up.

He closes his eyes, breathing in and out repeatedly until it follows a semblance of somewhat normal breathing rhythm. He braves himself to uncover his body completely.

Before that even happens, he whimpers because he realizes that he’s wearing nothing underneath the sheet while he sure as hell was last time he remembered. He still pushes himself to lift up the sheet, slowly with the deafening beating inside his rib cage as the counting.

As more and more of him is revealed, his heartbeat gets even harder and more painful. He feels a slightly taut patch of his skin on his stomach and he discovers that there is a dried white patch on it. He is pretty sure that is not a goddamn glue even though his brain is trying to put him into denial mode.

He also discover some bruising in a shape of hand prints–he has no doubt of whose they were, no matter how much he tries to deny it–on his left hip, both hips actually, and he also notices other smaller bruises scattered around his torso and even on his clavicle.

He sobs and whimpers even more when he finally pushes away the entire sheet, revealing even more small mouth-shaped bruises peppering his skin on his hips and his stomach and his thighs and the inner sides. He also sees red patches covered in drying white ones on the bed sheets between his legs and beneath him when he painfully tries to move to the side. When he tries to bend himself to look at his groin, pain shooting up his spine and stomach, he sees red and white, with pink of various shades on his pubic hair and below his member.

“Oh my God.”

He snatches the sheet on his left side and quickly drapes himself with it, desperately pulling and covering any patch of skin he can see.

Right on time, Matt comes into the room and notices the wreck that is his 23-year-old and no-longer virgin boyfriend. There are wet tear streaks on both Nate's cheeks with tears still pouring hard from his eyes. His body is shaking hard, either from the sobbing, the cold, or the fear, Matt isn't really sure. What he knows is nothing breaks his heart more that the weak, pitiful croaking coming out of Nate’s mouth.

“Matt, what did we do?”


	4. Chapter III : Post-debacle Mess

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I lied lol. I update it twice a week actually (although I will still update on friday), at least until my college gets really busy and I won't have time to write chapters in advance anymore.
> 
> This chapter will be a twist (or not, if you actually read the tags, or if you can just see where it's going), and it's gonna be a big part of the story after this. So buckle up and enjoy :D

Nate is sitting on the bed with an oversized sweater on top of his thick shirt, and he’s wearing loose workout pants. His hair is still wet and his body is still shivering lightly from the shower.

They are facing each other but their eyes are on their respective feet and the silence is deafening.

Matt is the first to slowly look up and truly looks at Nathan’s face, although Nathan is adamant about observing his interesting toes.

“Nate?”

No answer.

“Are you okay?”

Silence.

“Please, talk to me.”

Nathan still keeps quiet and unmoving, to the point of scarily so.

“Nathan, baby, I’m sorry.”

That slowly gets Nate to move his eyes to look up at his boyfriend.

Matt looks visibly relieved at the small response, but he curses under his breath the shrill tone of Nate’s phone’s ringtone. They both immediately look at the lighted screen of his phone.

_Ag. Felicia Lowell is calling…_

Nate shudders before shakily reaching for his phone, putting it on the bed between them. He taps on the green accept button and the speaker menu. Matt looks questioningly at him. He never picks up a work call on speaker mode like that.

“Don’t feel like holding the phone to my ear,” Nate explains softly.

_“Nathaniel Khiem Leighton, where the hell have you been? You said you’ll be back by September 10 th and now is 13th, yet I don’t see you in your penthouse!”_

Nate closes his eyes and bites his lips when he hears the date.

It’s been a week. A whole 7 days of him being screwed silly and he wasn’t even aware of any part of it, except for vague bits and pieces that he isn’t even sure is real, and of course, the throbbing pain on his lower back, lower belly, and his private parts.

He clears his throat and says, “Sorry.”

_“Sorry?! That’s the best you’ve got?! Really, Nathan? What the hell is wrong with you?!”_

_Everything_ , he thinks to himself.

God, he really wishes that for once, his agent actually adheres to typesign stereotype. He really can do with a calm Beta woman instead of an angry, yelling one right now.

“Something came up, so, um, I had to stay a bit longer.”

_“What is this ‘something’? Your family? Pretty sure they’re in New York and your sister is in UCLA, so she’s probably with you in L.A!”_

He takes a deep breath and closes his eyes. He does that a lot in the last few hours. He almost opens his eyes to talk, but she beats him to it.

_“How important is it that you goddamn skipped a meeting that I painstakingly arranged for you? Huh? You got a birthing secret girlfriend or something?”_

Nate winces. God, that hits close to home. Matt winces too at the remark.

“I’m gonna be back as soon as possible, tomorrow if I can. Okay? Just, I don’t know, take care of it.”

_“Oh, ‘just take care of it’! That easy, huh? I don’t get paid enough for this shit.”_

“I’m really sorry, okay? You know I’ve never been negligent like this.”

_“Exactly! You’re not about to fucking start now! Not while your reputation is shooting up but fragile like now!”_

“I know, I know. I swear nothing like this is going to happen anymore, Feli.”

_“Damn right, it won’t. But the least you can do is give some goddamn explanation other than a flimsy ‘something came up’! I’m waiting for that explanation when you get back, you hear me?”_

“Yeah, okay. Sure.”

_“Be back tomorrow.”_

Then a click.

He lets out a breath, partially relieved that the ordeal is over for now.

“How… how do you–” Matt braves himself to look up at Nate’s eyes, “–you know, feel?”

“I don’t know.”

Silence.

He feels Matt’s hand creeping up above his own and the fingers caressing his knuckles softly. It feels nice, but not significant enough to make him feel better. He still feels numb.

And aching too between his legs and his lower back, and also some parts of his body that he cannot bear to think about. He’d love to have something to make them feel better.

“I’m sorry.” He hears Matt again. He replies weakly that he shouldn’t be sorry and that it is not his fault. Maybe. It’s not his own fault, either. But, it’s heat. Heat is no one’s fault. Their state and nationwide law says that.

Is it?

“But, I, ugh, I knew that it was coming. I didn’t prepare it better, and now, you…”

Matt leaves it hanging, and Nate is thankful for that. He doesn’t want it rubbed on his face that his body has been violated and has betrayed him, and he doesn’t really have anyone to hold accountable for it.

“Nate, but…”

Nate looks up again to meet Matt slightly questioning eyes, although they still look largely guilty and crushed.

“It’s impossible.”

“What is?”

“You’re… you’re a Beta, right?”

When Nate doesn’t answer and instead opts for casting his eyes down, Matt pushes again, repeatedly calling his name and asking to tell him. Finally, He exhales and closes his eyes, then he looks straight at his boyfriend in the eyes.

“I’m Omega male. The recorded population is around 50 worldwide since 19th century, and that’s not even 100% credible record, so I don’t know. But I’m probably not Beta.”

Matt gapes slightly at that, seemingly perplexed at Nate as if he’s a fossil of a newly-found species of prehistoric animal rather than his own boyfriend of 8 months. The only thing he says after looking at him in such manner for a long time is, “That’s… real?”

Nate chuckles weakly and throw his hands in the air slightly. “Well, I’m real, aren’t I?”

“So that’s why you smelt like enticement perfume,” Matt remarks.

“Yeah, not enticement perfume. Just my pheromone.”

“And also why, um, I kind of felt a bit weird when I, um–”

“Don’t. No, no details. I don’t want to know.”

He can’t handle it anymore when Matt shows another telltale sign of repeating the apology mantra, and he feels even more fed up when his boyfriend starts suggesting to him to go to hospital to get him checked up for any injury or infection.

“I’m gonna book a flight,” he says weakly. He then proceeds to get off the bed gingerly and ignores Matt’s attempt to touch him and call for him.

He has no interest in allowing even more people into his most well-kept private identity piece and giving them access to violate his body.

* * *

His days in L.A are bleak but also filled with nervous aura. Things that his agent scolds him about go into his right ear like they’re muffled by cotton and proceed to leak out of his left ear. Things feel floaty and surreal, and the time seemingly stands still but also suddenly moves forward at the same time.

His friends, co-stars, and other musicians he interact and work with notice this, at least to some extent, although not significantly enough that people start getting personal and inquisitive. They generally just leave him to his own device when they have no business or are not working together with him. He’s usually a people person.

Not now, it seems, so he’s happy with people’s giving him space for once.

What he is not happy about is the fact that his communication with Matthew is a bit stilted at some points. When they are calling or FaceTiming each other, they feel almost ‘strangers’. It pains him because his misses it when they are effortless and easy with each other.

They also keep dancing around the issue of his, well, identity and the whole heat fiasco. He doesn’t know which one tries to tackle the issue and which one keeps running away from it. He can’t tell anymore.

At one point, he even cries the moment he hangs up because of how much he feels like his relationship and the person that he loves are slipping between his fingers, but he doesn’t know what to do.

He can’t think too much about it because he is too busy running towards his bathroom clutching his lower stomach and slamming his toilet lid open before retching into the porcelain bowl. His unbelievably cramping stomach is not making any of it easier.

It makes him terrified when this happens more and more often as the days go. Sometimes, it even happens on filming set or a recording studio or an office where a meeting he’s in is held.

_What is wrong with me?_

He decides to go to a pharmacy one day and buy some anti-nausea medicine and stomach acid problem remedy as he thought it must have been the cause. His eyes catch the sight of tacky small boxes with smiling woman’s photo on the front. Her eyes are trained on a blue-white stick in one hand while her other hand gently holds her lower belly.

It takes a while for his muddled mind to registers what those boxes with the woman picture are. His heart jumps to his throat.

It can’t.. it can’t be, right?

* * *

Nathan remembers when he was ten. His mom and dad thought he got an infection, maybe an appendicitis or something worse.

The ‘sickness’, at least that was what they, his sisters and all the housemaids thought was happening, appeared and progressed faster than what they could process. In less than 8 hours since he first complained of feeling uneasy and achy in his stomach, he was in a raging fever with temperature higher than 105 degree. He was in absolute agony by the night, and he wasn’t even fully conscious. He kept being delirious and wailing in pain, hands holding his lower abdomen, for at least a week.

When they brought him to the hospital, the doctors couldn’t figure out what was wrong. They had done various tests and scans, yet they couldn’t come up with anything. They could tell that there was something changing in his body, but they couldn’t figure out what.

Until they did the 5th ultrasound and second MRI.

Everyone in his family, and at least close associates, has always knows that he is different. There is something peculiar with his body, no secret about that. He has always known, too.

When he was born, like every curious and excited parent in the world, his parents ordered a typesign test. The result was strange. He had all three types’ proteins in his body, Alphanogen, Betanogen, and Omegatinogen, and all of them were all in roughly similar level. His proteins level stay consistently similar throughout his life, at least until that debacle when he was ten.

Sure, it’s not rare for babies to be born with more than one type of those proteins in their body, but it’s never three of them and certainly not on the same level. The proteins levels always fluctuate all their lives with one protein being the most often to be the highest. That protein is going to be the determining factor of what type the child will be when they present.

The typsign test itself, although if done periodically and kept track of can actually be used to tell in advance what type a kid will be, is not exactly easy or cheap as the child gets older, which is why only wealthy family do it until the child presents. Again, another reason why he hates typesigning; it just makes socio-economical gap bigger and more apparent. Not to mention, it makes child-prioritizing and type-gender role assigning more common in families with the excuse that parents want their children to be ready to face what common struggles their types will face in the world.

The doctor assured his parents that it didn’t seem to be interfering with his normal organ function, though. So even though he became a bit of an exciting discussion topic for some doctors who heard about it, they let it, and him, be.

Physiologically speaking, he was also a strange baby. Ever since the doctor could scan his body inside his late mom’s womb with ultrasound, the doctor could tell that his body grew a bit differently. Below his male reproductive organs, there was a small empty space.

It wasn’t any organ from what the various doctors his parents called and visited could tell. When he was born, the empty space in his lower abdomen seemed to be pulling in the patch of skin between his penis and his anus. The doctors thought he was developing imperfectly as a fetus, but as far as they could tell, it wasn’t a life-threatening fetus development imperfection.

As he grew up, the doctors also confirmed that the caving-in skin on his private part and the empty space inside his stomach weren’t something to be concerned about. “Just think of it as a birthmark _inside_ of him instead of on the skin,” those experts said. So that was the end of it.

Until he was ten and having seizure because of the extreme fever on a hospital bed.

Of course none of them thought of it as something benign and normal like presenting. After all, Nate was a boy. Boys don’t go through puberty until they are at least 12, and in some cases, even 13 or 14. Not to mention that his entire family was expecting him to present as Beta who is notoriously the latest to hit puberty among all the three types. Besides, what kind of presenting is followed by dangerously high fever, extreme abdominal pain, and deliriousness to the point of being completely unresponsive?

After he become conscious again, his heavily pregnant mom smiled at him forcedly then broke down in heaving sob with her arms gathering him and embracing him really tight. His dad just looked at him with relieved but also sad face, his hand caressing the top of his head.

His 13-year-old Alpha eldest sister, Celia, gave him a hard, unreadable stare, and so did his 8-year-old suspected (now confirmed) Omega younger sister, Elizabeth. (His younger sister actually did a bit of a weirded-out grimace before looking at his eldest sister with a questioning stare, though he didn’t really care because those two sisters of him had never particularly treated him with pleasant attitude). Thankfully, his other older sister, Harper, a Beta who is only a year older, just hugged him and told him, “Oh, Jeez, Natey, I’m so glad you’re up now! I’m really worried about you!”

After he rested a bit and became almost as alert and as normal as before the sickness, his older sister told him everyone was terrified, especially after he experienced bleeding from between his leg right when the seizure started. He was surprised and a bit scared, even though it already passed and he was pretty much okay. His sister told him to not worry about it.

But then the doctor came in and gave him the most shocking news he has ever heard in his life.

“Son, this is something that even in my entire career and medical education I have never heard of, let alone seen. I’m pretty sure even the entire New York has never ever witnessed something like this, something like _you_. But it seems that the myth is not only a myth, son.”

Nate gave the doctor a puzzled look and swept the room to see his family’s reactions. They seemed to know what was going on already.

“Congratulation, you’re the first ever Omega male this entire hospital, and probably the entire state, has ever seen.”

He was speechless.

The doctor explained more about what happened to him, but he didn’t listen to any of it. This was not what he was expecting.

Later when he was discharged from the hospital, his mom explained to him that he just presented, and in the process, his secondary reproduction system bloomed and matured. His seemingly empty space inside his stomach was actually an underdeveloped womb. When they stopped monitoring his body, his womb, ovarium, and everything else grew and developed.

The presenting was the peak of the entire process. It was also the process of his feminine reproduction system opening up a passage. That was why he was bleeding. The caved in skin on his private part was actually a still-closed labia. Of course, because it wasn’t naturally open since he was born like with cis girls’, he was bound to get a little scarring there and he might have had to deal with the discomfort of the wound healing until it became a functioning genital.

Oh God, he actually had two genitals, he thought in the car ride home, scared and bewildered.

Now that he is 23 sitting against his penthouse wall with hugged knees, he feels the same confusion and fear blooming in the pit of his gut. Only, it’s not the fact that he has both a penis and a vagina that causes them–that he has already grown accustomed to–but it’s the stick with two red lines in front of him.


	5. Chapter IV : News about Debacle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys. So, this is just a short chapter. Sorry about that (or maybe you'll be more thankful?)
> 
> I tried making it longer and kinda attaching some parts of the next chapter, but it didn't work. But, it's okay. It's just to show you how these two cutie pie boys deal with the news. Enjoy!

He keeps pacing back and forth in his living room, repeatedly looking at the ominous blue-and-white stick on the glass table. He keeps gripping the phone in his left hand and bringing it up to his face only to lower it again and pulls his hair in frustration. Matt’s contact is on the screen, and his thumb keeps hovering on the call button but never tapping it.

He groans angrily when he fails to call his boyfriend again.

“Come on, Nate. You gotta tell him. He’s the father, he should know.”

He decides to stop in his track to sit down. Then he takes a breath.

Without looking at his phone, he taps the button before he can think about it. After he brings the screen to his vision, it shows that he’s already in the process of calling Matt.

It takes a little while, and each beep sends him to even deeper paranoia and nausea. He thought that he should have talked in detail about what happened. He should have made Matthew explain thoroughly how he screwed him, like where the dick went. Was it just in his backdoor or his, well, vagina? Or was it both? Did Matt come inside him? He should have not vehemently refused to discuss it because now he doesn’t know what’s going on and he’s scared.

He’s not even sure what he’s afraid of. Matt says he loves him and cares about him, and whatever happens after the whole heat fiasco, he’s going to be there for him. So, Matt isn’t going to abandon him, right? It’s going to be okay, right?

After a while, there is a click that signals Matt has picked it up. He then hears a small ‘Nathan, hey.’

He brings up his phone to his ear with shuddering breath and trembling hand.

“Uh, um. Hey, Matthew.”

 _“Babe?_ _What’s wrong? You okay?”_

_No, I’m not. The pregnancy test is positive. Not okay at all._

“Uh, yeah. Kind of,”

_“Nathan? What’s going on?”_

“Matt, darling, are you sitting right now?”

He bites his lower lip, his eyes trained at the tiny plastic item in front of him. He hears steps on the other side of the line and then a creaking of a chair being sat down.

_“Well, I am now. Why?”_

“I need to tell you something.”

There is a deafening silence. He thinks Matt is holding his breath. Why isn’t he responding?

“Matt? Promise me that whatever I’m telling you, it’s not gonna change things between us, okay?”

The silence still persists.

“Matt?” he tries again, his voice sounding more desperate and cracked on the edge.

_“What is it?”_

“Just, promise me first.”

_“Nathan, if you have to make me promise that, this thing is probably gonna change things between us, so just tell me.”_

He closes his eyes and slaps a hand onto his mouth to stop a whimper. There is a rolling wetness on his cheek.

 _“Baby? Just tell me. It’s important, isn’t it?”_ Matt sounds gentler this time.

After he composes himself a little and is sure he’s not going to fall into a helpless sobbing, he opens his mouth.

“I’ll send you a picture in a while. Just a minute, okay?”

He immediately hangs up right after without listening to Matt’s reply.

He looks at the screen of his phone for a while before opening his camera app and pointing his phone’s back camera to the stick. When the item appears in the screen, his hand starts trembling again to the point of his having to snap the picture dozens of time because the image keeps coming out blurry. Eventually, after several attempts, he deems the latest one clear and straightforward enough.

There is a pregnancy test stick, and on the tiny plastic screen are two red lines. There is no way Matt can interpret this incorrectly. He immediately sends the picture and waits.

He waits for a minute, and two, then five, then ten, and half an hour, and until the sky outside turns from blue afternoon sky to dark navy night sky.

Each seconds he goes through waiting for a response is an agony, and he can’t quell the fear and the anger he feels inside him. Matt can’t just abandon him. It’s his doing. Nate didn’t even exactly want it at that time. He can’t just not take some responsibility for it.

He finally can’t contain the storm of emotion within him, so he slides down the same wall he leaned against before and lets himself be consumed by his anguished cry.

* * *

He’s woken up by a vibrating object in his hand.

When he pulls himself up to a half sitting position, he sees that the sky across his enormous glass window is already pitch black. It looks blurry, though. So he feels the ground he was asleep on minutes ago with his palm to look for his glasses. After a painstaking 30-second searching and patting the carpet, he finally finds his bifocals and puts them on.

His attentions is then brought back to the thing that wakes him. It is his phone which is currently being called by none other than his boyfriend. The phone is immediately against his ear and connected to the call before he registers it.

_“Nathan?”_

“Hey, Matt.”

_“Is that real?”_

He feels deeply offended and pouts. Why would he make a fake positive pregnancy test stick?

“Of course, yeah. Kinda wish it weren’t though.”

 _“You’re serious?”_ Matt ignores the last comment.

“Why would you think I would lie to you about this?” he asks, irritated.

_“I just, uh… You’re…you’re a guy, Nathan.”_

“Yeah, an Omega guy. In case, you forget.”

_“And that can actually happen?”_

“Apparently, yeah. I can get knocked up,” he chuckles bitterly.

Matt is silent after that.

_“Oh my god, I thought me being gay would actually save me from this.”_

Nate can just see Matt massaging his forehead with his fingers wearing a grimace right now. He’s also probably propping his right hand on the nearest table.

“Well, it didn’t.”

_“I really did knock you up, didn’t I?”_

“According to this crappy stick right here,” he looks at the table where the said stick is still sitting on, “and my nausea and throwing up fests in the last few mornings, yes, you did.”

_“You actually get morning sickness?”_

Nate rolls his eyes. They’re potentially in deep trouble for unplanned pregnancy and Matt is awed by the fact that he can get morning sickness.

“Again, I wish I didn’t.”

_“Oh, poor you, baby. I’m sorry to hear that. But are you, okay?”_

He sounds so calm and caring that Nate can’t help letting out a small relieved breath. It’s a good sign.

“I’m, yeah, fine. Nothing out of ordinary, as far as being, um, pregnant goes.”

They are silent again after that.

_“What are we gonna do?”_

He inhales deeply and puts his head back against the wall, too tired to keep himself upright. God, it’s all unreal.

“I don’t know. I was hoping you’ll have an idea, since you’re in biomedical field and all.”

_“Yeah, well, I’m not exactly taught about how to deal with a pregnant Omega boyfriend.”_

He chuckles, followed by Matt’s own giggle.

_“Are you…”_

“What?”

_“Uh.. do you, you know, wanna keep it?”_

For some reason, probably because of the god-awful question itself, he feels a strong nausea and he’s racing to his bathroom and dropping his phone to the tiles before he knows it. He slams the lid of the toilet open and retches into the bowl.

After a while and a small amount of disgusting completely liquid bile, he sits back and spits. He lies down on the cold tile after flushing while waiting for the water noise to stop. Nate pulls himself up right after to go to the sink and washes his mouth on the tap.

When the whole ordeal is done, he lies back down on the cool floor and puts the phone on speaker mode.

_“Hey, baby, you okay there?”_

“Yeah.” No, not really. But oh well.

_“That doesn’t sound fun.”_

“It’s…not at all,” he agrees weakly.

 _“Nathan?”_ He just grunts in acknowledgement.

_“I’m sorry I put you through this, okay? We’re gonna deal with this together. Don’t worry.”_

He hates his body right now for making him nauseous, giving him cramps in the last few days, and making him emotional. He really shouldn’t have to cry because of that promise from Matt, but he does.

When he audibly sobs, Matt just keeps telling him that it’s all going to be okay in the end and that he’s not alone in this.

That is what he needs to hear the most right now. He really doesn’t want to be alone going through this path.


	6. Chapter V : The Truth about Debacle?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this is the last pre-written chapter I've had before I started posting it, so next ones might be late for posting. It may be friday but later than usual, it may be just friday next week, or I may move the updating day to sunday altogether. Be patient if that happens, okay? 
> 
> Anyway, let me know what you think, and enjoy ;)

“Good morning, Mister… Leighton.”

The woman with chin-length hair behind the desk with a small ‘Dr. Alexandria Florence’ plaque on it greets him, looking comically confused. It’s not every day that two men walk into an OB-GYN office and not a woman in sight.

After their emotional phone call (at least from his side), they decided they should check the baby’s and his health first. Matt also suggests getting as much information as possible from credible source, which is an OB-GYN, of course, before deciding what to do with the pregnancy. Lo and behold, they got themselves a first prenatal appointment with the OB-GYN of Matt’s friend’s recommendation. Now, here they are 10 days later, having the said appointment.

“Good morning, Doctor,” they both greet her back quietly.

She regards them both for a while before saying, “So which one of you is actually here for the appointment?”

For some reason, that makes his heart hammer in his chest. He can’t exactly talk and say it out loud that he’s… pregnant. What if the word gets out and the media hears?

Matt takes the lead by saying, “It’s him, my, uh, boyfriend.”

Great, two mind-boggling secrets out at once. The media is going to have a field day if they hear this.

“I’m going to be honest. I thought my secretary got it wrong, maybe she was talking about a Miss Leighton, but–” Nate squirms a little under her semi-judging look and holds down his breath, “–I see that’s not the case, but come sit down anyway.”

He lets out his breath.

Matt walks first to the pair of seats in front of the desk. He looks back at Nate who is rooted at his spot, his heart feeling like it’s going to burst out of his chest.

“Nate?”

His right leg, though feeling as heavy as a goddamn boulder, finally moves and so does his left one after that.

Following that, the visit is strange for everyone involved, but at least Dr. Florence doesn’t give him a bewildered look when he says he is an Omega. She tells him that she knows people of those type, Omega males, do exist. They’re just very small in number, probably less than even the most endangered animal’s population.

That is why there is still some debate concerning the existence of his kind. Omega men are almost treated as Yetis are. Some people see them, but they can’t exactly prove their existence, leading to other people assuming that they are just lying. It’s also, surprisingly, the case with academic and medical research field. Some thought of intersex people as Omega male before looking into it a little more and discovering that they are wrong, which strengthens the Omega men skepticism in the medical world.

Those lead to her saying, “I don’t have that much knowledge of Omega men. In fact, I have almost none, except for the flimsy not-yet-proven theories about Omega men’s biology. The medical and generally STEM world just don’t have that many experience to learn them. We’re not even guaranteed to come across one in a life time.”

That is definitely reassuring.

“But, I imagine, because you’re still the same species as women, unless you’re secretly Neanderthal,” she laughs, although he just gives her a constipated-looking half-smile, “your biology is not going to be that different from me. So, I’m sure I can base my observations on the general Homo Sapien’s female reproductive system with a little adjustment.”

She directs him on what to do, asks for permission and warns him about what she’s going to do to him, and asks him all sorts of things that, even though he’s already searched for them on the internet prior to the visit, still leave him dumbfounded. He’s never thought he’d ever hear those questions directed at him. She even asks about the intercourse which leads to his pregnancy, and she does it so frankly and clinically.

He and Matt can’t stop the flaming reddening on their cheeks.

After having his blood drawn for some tests, being poked, prodded, swabbed, touched, pushed in the weirdest places and asked several more weird questions, he is finally told that she is going to perform the ultrasound scan. He thought that it wasn’t going to be done since he was under the impression that it was going to be the first and only physical exam she was going to perform on him.

Matt holds his hand gently and smiles soothingly at him.

The sonographer then takes out a relatively big bottle of ultrasound gel. She lifts his shirt up and pushes his jeans down a little. When he blushes, she and Dr. Florence just laugh a little and tell him that he’s just gone through worse for the previous physical exam.

Still, that’s very uncomfortable for him.

After that, she squirts out a generous amount of the gel to his stomach. The liquid is cool on his stomach and the scanner is pushed a little bit too hard on it. “Sorry,” she says. He just mumbles, “S’kay.”

She keeps rolling it on his lower stomach a little gentler after that, but after a while, Dr. Florence looks at the screen strangely. With narrowed eyes and questioning stance, she takes over the scanner from the sonographer and rolls it on his stomach more while stopping for a while to observe that particular spot better.

“Are you sure your latest heat is only four weeks ago?”

They both turn to her confusedly.

“Yeah, it’s in 6th of September?” he says uncertainly. The sentence comes out more as a question.

She gives him a long, hard stare.

“Why?” Matt finally asks.

She looks a bit sympathetic to Matt, but it passes quickly that he isn’t sure what he’s seeing.

“I did say that what I observe and what I can tell you is based on the science of female reproduction system with a little adjustment, right?”

They both nod.

“Again, I need to tell you there might be something different, so my judgement can change and can be wrong. After all, you’re not 100% the same with woman. In fact, no two women are the same.”

“What are you getting at, Doctor?” Matt finally snaps impatiently.

The sonographer and Dr. Florence look carefully at Matt, then sweeps a bit at him before going back to his boyfriend. She inhales audibly as if to prepare to tell Matt that he has a cancer or something along the line.

Nate really doesn’t like it.

“It looks more like an almost six weeks to me.”

Matt immediately looks at him sharply and he blanches.

“That’s impossible,” Nate instinctively says.

She assures them again that she can be wrong–which she, of course, is; he was a virgin before the heat, after all–considering that she doesn’t know for sure how Omega men’s pregnancies work. She keeps saying that she probably can tell for sure how far along he is in the next visit as if sensing the tension between Nate and Matt and the bubbling furious energy in him.

The rest of it feels so stifling to Nate. If at first Matt was very attentive and calming, he is now rigid and cold, only answering and responding to Dr. Florence in a syllable or two. Sometimes, he doesn’t answer at all and lets Nate handle the full weight of the questions being asked.

He stays that way until they’re sitting in the car.

“Matt?” he carefully asks.

Matt doesn’t reply. Instead, he starts the car and drives out of the clinic silently.

“Matt, you know I’ve never done anything with anyone else, right?”

“Sure.”

Good God, it’s agonizing.

“Matt, talk to me.”

“I’m driving. Do you wanna crash?”

Matt says it so sharply and coldly he can’t help but gasps a little.

“She says she can be wrong.”

Matt’s eyes still stay furiously on the road.

“Matt.”

“Why, you’re hoping that she’s wrong so that you won’t be caught as the _Cheap. Cheating. Whore_ that you are?”

Nathan stays speechless all the way back to Matt’s apartment. His only movement is a gulp and some blinking when he feels his eyes water. He ends up not being able to stop it once his tear gets too much for his eyelids to handle, so he lets it roll down his cheek.

* * *

When they arrive, Matt quickly gets out of the car and slam the door so hard that the entire cars wobbles. Nate, even though he’s already red-eyed and puffy around the eyes, can’t stop the painful choking sob at that. He lets himself cries openly inside the car for a while before mustering the strength to open the door and got out himself.

God, he really doesn’t want to go up there. Matt probably doesn’t want him in his apartment anyway.

Maybe he’ll find his things on the doorstep once he get there.

His hands fly to his face and he slides down to the hard concrete floor, deciding he’s way too mentally unstable to really find out.

It’s an absolute bullshit. (And look, he even swears.)

“Screw this,” he said, forcibly pulling his body up which seems to be glued to the ground. He is going to reason with Matt. Matt will believe him if he tries hard enough. He has to.

With that desperate determination, Nate bring his right leg to his front, beginning the grueling journey to Matt’s apartment up in the 10th floor.

After a long ten-minute walk (which usually takes only about five but he’s had a bad, bad day, so sue him for walking slightly slower than usual), he finally gets to the front door of his boyfriend’s apartment. Thankfully, his things aren’t on the floor in front of the door. He’s going to take that as good sign. Maybe Matt has gotten over whatever Alpha-inspired aggression he’s had and thinks rationally about the information from Dr. Florence.

He debates with himself when he’s about to turn the knob, hand repeatedly going forward and retreating before he decides to knock softly before going in. He found his boyfriend sitting on the couch, eyes not particularly looking at any direction with both hands linked contemplatively against his face.

“Matt?” Nate asks softly as if he is giving a warning before sitting down beside his boyfriend with uncertainty. He gives a wide berth between them. Matt doesn’t respond, only continuing to stare blankly at the black screen of the TV.

Nate looks down dejectedly when Matt offers no response while instinctively rubbing his lower belly. He tries not to let his hormone and emotion get the best of him with crying, worried that Matt will look at him even more unfavorably because he appears too weak or manipulative.

“The fetus is visible already.”

Nate is taken aback by the sudden sound. He can’t help but look perplexedly at Matt.

“Four weeks isn’t supposed to be visible, you know that? It’s supposed to be just a little dot. Not even noticeable unless you really pay attention to the ultrasound. I thought it was strange that the fetus is already the size of a small peanut, but I brushed it off.”

“I swear, Matt, you know it’s four weeks–”

“Just shut up, Nate,” Matt loudly interrupts. He immediately complies.

“Four weeks aren’t enough to give fetus a shape because the organs are just starting to develop, if at all by this point. But yours already has a head and a fucking yolk sac, Nate. That’s not–” Matt sinks his face even further into his palms and exhales loudly, “–that isn’t four weeks. I’m not fucking dumb.”

“But you know when it was conceived. You were there. You’re the one who put it in me!” he cries.

“Really? Am I?” Matt chuckles darkly. Before he gets to argue his case more, Matt holds up a hand and continues. “Why did you not tell me that your own heat was coming, then?”

“Because it wasn’t supposed to come at that time! Not for another month from now, I swear!”

“Are you sure? Is it not just because you want to strategically hide the fact that it’s someone else’s by trapping me with your own heat and forcibly making my own came a _fucking week earlier_?”

“It’s not like that, Matt, I promise! It’s–”

“Who is it?” Matt ignores him.

“It’s yours, Matt! I swear! I didn’t know why the heat came at that time, I already had it two weeks earlier.”

“Are you fucking telling me you get another heat after two fucking weeks? How fucking dumb do you think I am?”

“I don’t know, Matt! I don’t know!”

“So it’s your ex boyfriend’s? Your oh-he’s-abusive-and-he-forced-me-to-have-sex ex? Did you finally let him fuck you in Milan?”

Nate winces, feeling scared, frustrated, and furious at the same time. He decides to breathe in and out to calm himself. Somebody has to stay calm here.

“No, I didn’t even see him there. But you heard it, even doctor Florence said she doesn’t know much about Omega men. It’s probably because you’re Alpha and I am Omega, and we’re supposed to be suitable, so our heats follow each other,” Nate tries calmly, as calm he can at that moment.

Matt chuckles darkly. “Oh so now you suddenly believe in typesigning when it suits you, huh?”

“No, I’m just–”

“Or are you telling me you bought an illegally strong heat inducer just so you’ll have an easy way out of getting a father for your bastard child?” Matt is suddenly full-out yelling by this point, his veins popping out in his necks and eyes blazing. Nate can’t help cowering in fear.

When he doesn’t answer, Matt takes that chance to continue verbally abusing him again. “I fucking bet this is why you never told me you’re an Omega.”

“What?” he croaks, surprised. “I just don’t want people to know I’m an anomaly.”

“No. It’s because people will know how much of a fuckin slut you are, ‘cause that’s all Omegas are good for. Coming at and spreading their legs for anyone they see so that they can make babies and save us from extinction, right? Just like the animals that they are.”

He can’t help the strong gasp and fat rolls of tears from getting out. The words hurt so, so much more coming out from someone that he trusts and he thinks would see his kind as equals. It hurts much more than when he heard people harassing and catcalling his little sister and when he read those things on the internet. Matt was the absolute last person he thought would say those things to him, _to his face._

When Matt moves to get up from the couch, he asks weakly, “What are we gonna do with the baby?”

“I don’t fucking know, that’s not mine. You tell me.” Matt laughs darkly again.

Nate is so close to sobbing and yelling _it is four weeks, it IS yours, just please don’t abandon me like this_ , but he can’t. He still can’t make a sound when Matt rises and walks away to their, no, _Matt’s_ room before slamming the door harshly.


	7. Chapter VI : Post-debacle Emptiness

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heya, sorry that it's late, but I warned you before that it's gonna be late. Idk about Sunday update, I'll try but no promise.
> 
> Anyway, if you haven't noticed (or if you just clicked on this story), I've started titling my chapters. Before this (well, before tuesday actually), this story's chapters don't really have titles, just 'Chapter 1' and bla bla. Now they do, so what do you think? :D
> 
> Warning for suicidal ideation (not that serious, but just be careful)

The only saving grace of the disastrous prenatal visit is an official medical letter saying that he’s an Omega man and is pregnant.

His agent still hasn’t let him off the hook after he was late to come back to L.A, and she didn’t buy his excuse of a friend getting into medical emergency. As far as she was concerned, his friends who are close enough to warrant his dropping everything to help with emergencies live here in L.A and in New York City. His friends in San Francisco are just college friends in the passing who would not opt to ask him for help in dire situations, just like how he wouldn’t ask them.

“What’s this?” Felicia asks when she receives the envelope he gives her.

He just shrugs.

His agent keeps looking at him suspiciously as she opens the envelope and pulls out the paper inside. She reads it carefully and, in his opinion, quite slowly as if to torture him with tension. At one point, her eyes stop moving and her lips went apart a little, then she continues again. She keeps reading the letter, seemingly over and over again from the top to the bottom before sighing and folding it back to its original shape.

She blinks few times before looking at him.

“Is the baby progressing well?” she surprisingly asks.

It takes a while for him to fully take in the question. He says, “Well, the doctor didn’t say there’s anything unusual.” Except for the fact that it’s progressing almost two weeks faster.

“That’s good.”

They regard each other awkwardly again. Well, he does.

“Are you keeping it?”

“What?”

“The baby. Are you keeping it? ‘Cause if you are, you’re gonna have to take a break. I can take care of the contract stuff.”

Since when did his agent become so nice and accommodating?

“I don’t know.”

“Have you asked the dad? The other dad, I mean. Does he want it?”

“He doesn’t want to have anything to do with it,” he chuckles sadly.

“I bet he’s Alpha.”

When Nathan looks at her sharply, she continues, “Let’s face it. They’re the kinds who got you knocked up on your heat then blame and slutshame you for not preparing yourself more and keeping yourself away from them, whether they’re actually in heat themselves or not. Entitled and evasive pricks.”

It feels like a punch to his gut rather than a comrade feeling of equally resenting an Alpha. It hits too close to home for him to be comforting.

“Hey, look. It’s gonna be fine, okay? Just go back to New York to your family and forget about this piece of shit jerk who got you knocked up. Your family will help you out, right?”

“Why are you–” he searches his Beta agent’s eyes, “–being so helpful to me now? You’re not like this, usually.”

“Hey, I’m not that much of a bitch. I don’t yell at pregnant ladies.” He gives her a deadpanned look. “Or pregnant man, in this case.”

“I just don’t like to be undermined by men. You know how it is–” _not really, I never do, but maybe it’s just me_ , “–and also by other types, just ‘cause I’m the pacifist ‘diplomatic’ Beta,” she continues, complete with the air quotation mark.

She sighs softly. “And look, I’ve never told you this but I have an Omega cousin who accidentally got pregnant on her heat. Nobody knew. She was a star student, always getting As and being active in school projects and shits. Suddenly she became lethargic, anxious, and jumpy. She didn’t participate much in academic stuff anymore, and she got sick a lot. Should be obvious in your case, too.”

“I’m a guy, though,” he interjects.

“Yeah.”

“So what happened with her?” he prompts further.

“We didn’t find out until much later when she had bleeding in her 9th or 10th week, I don’t really remember.”

His heart jumps to his throat. He asks, “And?”

“Well, her Beta boyfriend kind of got sad she hid it from him and everyone else in their families and friends circle. He wanted to be there for her, you know. Thankfully, the baby survived and is a pretty and chubby 3 year-old now.”

He exhales, relieved.

“She got married to him, and they’re now at Brown while the baby stays with her family, and our extended family too sometimes.”

He’s glad. At least, someone out there got the happy ending she deserves.

* * *

After the talk he had with his agent, he feels somewhat relieved that he gets to tell someone about who he is and what predicament he’s in. It’s kind of entertaining when she asked him whether he has period or not. It was even more hilarious when she got relatively mad because he told her that he doesn’t.

“It’s unfair. You got womb, you’re supposed to suffer every month like the rest of us too,” she said.

He usually relies on Matt for confiding in things like this, but apparently not anymore, so he’s grateful that Felicia turns out to be a little softer than he thought. She even offered to take care of anything that comes up with his maternity (or is it paternity?) leave/break with his lawyer should he choose to have it. He’s never been more appreciative of his hard-edged agent. She also offered keeping his identity as an Omega and his pregnancy a secret, although she urges him to tell his family about the latter.

He doesn’t want to.

He knows that his family is progressive, every family is in this day and age, but still. His family is prominent enough in the nation and his own reputation is big but fragile enough that news of unplanned pregnancy (or that he can even get pregnant) might be a significant unwanted blow to their pride and social stability. He can’t even imagine what sort of condescending words his eldest sister is going to throw at him.

While thinking about it, he is suddenly overcome with nausea and he rushes to the nearest restroom before slamming a cubicle door and toilet lid open. He retches hard and painfully, narrowly missing the bowl, and he curses the universe that he still has to deal with morning sickness even five (seven?) weeks after the conceiving.

It brings him to the memory of the last day he was staying at Matt’s apartment. He was feeling sick and on the verge of vomiting, and he was hoping that his miserable condition would sway his now ex-boyfriend (is he? They never explicitly broke up, though). All Matt did was look at him disdainfully and tell him to get out and stay somewhere else so that he won’t ever accidentally throw up where he isn’t supposed to. He doesn’t want Nate dirtying his place.

He had never felt so dejected and hurt in his entire life.

He couldn’t help weeping again, just as hard if not harder, than that day. He’d never been particularly depressive in his life, but at that point, he feels like death would have been more merciful for him.

* * *

Two weeks later, he feels somewhat normal again. His feature film acting agent and manager are already listing all the potential gigs he can take, his publicist are setting up promotional appearances and interviews for the upcoming movie he starred in, and he’s already in fully normal schedule with his producers and other session musicians. He’s not expecting anything to stray from his planned agendas, even if he still feels a bit empty somewhere in his chest when he doesn’t get a normal ‘have a good day :*’ or ‘I <3 you’ text on his days.

He’s fine.

He’s still got his younger sister, Ellie, who’s accompanying him sometimes when she doesn’t have a class at UCLA. He also has his other younger sister, a bubbly 13-year-old Beta named Luna who calls him every day from Manhattan after school along with their 6-year-old Alpha stepsister Devonne. Their older sister Harper often joins in the call if she’s at their family home. Sometimes, he also hangs out with Jeanne and Jack, his co-writer and record producer (who are also his high school friends and former bandmates), after recording sessions.

The fact that they’re oblivious to his bouts of now-hidden sickness and growing belly (or that he’s now single and was even in a relationship in the first place) is not a big deal. His heart certainly doesn’t stop abruptly every time someone mentions pregnancy, birth, or baby.

(Okay, that one is kind of a lie.)

So, he doesn’t really expect any out of ordinary call that day.

Nate is reading a script of a potential historical film his agent recommended when his phone vibrates on his night stand. He doesn’t look at the screen when his right hand grabs it and taps the green button. His eyes are still on the middle line of the page he’s on when the phone is against his ear and he automatically goes, “Nathan Leighton,” in a professional voice.

_“Am I calling at a bad time?”_

Nate immediately pulls his phone away and stares wide-eyed at the screen. The white-font _Matt Langdon_ is clear on the screen, stark against a picture of himself kissing the cheek of the said person. He doesn’t know whether to be grateful or not that he never had the guts to change it.

 _“Nathan? You there?”_ he hears faintly from the speaker after staring doubfoundedly at the screen for a few seconds. He snaps back into himself and puts the phone back on.

“Uh, yeah. Um, what’s up?”

Goddamit, he’s such a loser. _What’s up? Really, Nate?_

_“Good. I want to tell you something.”_

With just one sentence, Nate’s mind has already started to wander off to the image of Matthew running towards him in slow motion, falling to his knees right in front of him, begging him to take him back because he didn’t mean the things that he said three weeks ago; it was just a misunderstanding and he’s regretting it all now. There are even cherry blossoms falling from the trees around them. Where they came from, he doesn’t know and he doesn’t care. All he knows is that it is nice. But…

_“Nate? Nate? Nathan! For God’s sake, are you even listening?”_

Nate forces himself to snap back again to reality, clearing his throat and saying, “Yes, yes, I am.”

He’s totally not.

_“Really? What was I saying, then?”_

Crap.

“Um, it’s…”

An audible sigh from the other end ensues, and he mentally smacks himself hard.

_“If you don’t care about what I say or you have more important things to do, you just have to say so.”_

“No, look, sorry. I was just tired. What were you saying?”

There is another audible sigh and a palpable tense silence for a while. He rolls his eyes because, who is ignoring what the other has said now? Thankfully, Matt does end up responding.

_“Doctor Florence wants us to go visit her again. Something about your blood work and shit. She’s reminding us that another visit is due a week from now. Well, five days. Apparently, we somehow booked another appointment near the end of our last one.”_

He furrows his eyebrows. “What?”

_“Oh for fuck’s sake–”_

“No, I mean I know. But, what?”

Again, another sigh. This one sounds considerably more condescending.

Nathan takes it upon himself to defend his intelligence that is apparently being looked down upon by his ex, so he says, “No, you don’t get it. I understand what you’re saying but why are you telling me this? Why did she even call _you_ about this, not me, the actual client?”

 _“Fuck knows. Probably because I’m still registered as your partner or something,”_ oh, that hurts, so he easily and openly admits that he is no longer Nate’s partner, _“–and she said that I’m advised to go too with you because there is an important information I need to know as, well, your partner.”_

Um, what?

Matt sighs again when he just stays silent (isn’t he sick of sighing that much?) before adding, _“Her assistant told me that the office called you to check in about the appointment. You didn’t pick up. So are you going or not?”_

Nate pulls the phone away again, fingers quickly tapping the screen to see the call log to find any missed call that could be from the OB-GYN office. Admittedly, he did reject a lot of calls in the last few weeks when he was still in the funk about the whole prenatal visit mess. The journalists also noticed his even further mood changes and decided to bombard his phone for interviews.

He ends up giving up as he sees too many unknown numbers in red. “I don’t know which one is her number. When did she call?”

_“Dunno. That’s all she told me.”_

Nate is about to ask for the office number and more information when Matt talks again. _“Nate, look, I’ve got things to do, so just cancel it or something if you’re not going. Then text me. I don’t know. I don’t care. I gotta go now.”_

“Okay.” He gulps, swallowing his disappointment and hurt.

Then the line immediately goes dead. That’s it. No good bye, no good night, not even asking how he’s doing.

The promise that he’s going to be there with him every step of the way? Doesn’t matter. All because of a probable scenario that the life inside Nate is not biologically his. Nate doesn’t know whether to be devastated to lose the person he loves or relieved that he’s shown Matt’s somewhat true colors.

He looks down on his undoubtedly slightly bulged and but still toned belly under his sweater.

“You just like to cause troubles, don’t you? Can’t imagine how it will be when you’re born,” he softly says, gently touching where he knows there is a little him growing.

He knows the circumstance is unwanted, but he realizes that he doesn’t want the baby in him to feel like that. Like he does now.


	8. Chapter VII : Let's Talk about Debacle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ayyyy won't you look at that. I'm actually on time for this chapter.
> 
> Fun fact, this story is actually the omegaverse fanfic of my own original story and it's supposed to take place in 2018 because I had the idea for the story since like late 2014. I was just imagining the things to happen years into my future, but I didn't manage to write it (the original) down, not until I thought of turning it into omegaverse and changing all the characters' names because the original one is just too personal for me. I thought of letting it happen in 2018 but I was like 'fuck it, it's already 2017 anyway, might as well make it this year'. Also, Nathan (or the original character) was supposed to be born in 1995, but obviously because of the year change, he was born in 1994 instead.
> 
> As always, enjoy and let me know what you think ;)
> 
> EDIT: also, please just pretend that this year oscar's actually have nate in it lol, i kinda time it coincidentally wrong (or right?) cause today is oscar night

Nate’s back automatically straightens back up as his mouth mutters friendly ‘you’re welcome’. The girl standing beside him tucks in the phone used to take picture of herself with him after she thanked him. Then another person, a boy around 4 or 5 years younger than himself and not that much shorter, walks up to him with his phone ready.

He does the same thing again: puts up a smile, puts his hand lightly around the boy’s shoulder, bends down a little, then waits until the person assigned to take picture says ‘done!’

It’s tiring, if he is being honest, but he loves it. Sure it takes a lot of energy to smile non-stop for at least half an hour (his cheeks hurt like hell now), be a bit chirpy for the same period of time regardless of how he truly feels, and keeps bending down to the side and straightens up again repeatedly, but it warms his heart to do this. He gets to meet people who are excited to see him and sometimes to discuss the characters he played (happens a lot now that he won his first Oscar this year) or the music he releases. At least, he knows that there are people who appreciate what he does and support him.

After the boy gets out of the room, Nate exhales and rubs his cheek a little. The crew of the talk show he just went in says their thanks, including the host, then he walks up to his manager, falling into step with the already fast walking late-twenties Alpha woman along the heavily Halloween-decorated backstage of the set. They’re heading straight towards the door below the illuminated ‘exit’ sign.

“So, what else is next?”

Macy Buxton, his manager, is busy looking at her phone, so she doesn’t respond. He’s about to ask again, mildly irritated that he is ignored, but she beats him to it.

“Not until 4 days from now on November 3rd for that post-Halloween special thingy.” He sighs, relieved. “Although you have a flight in 2 hours going to San Francisco.”

He falters in his step a little and widens his eyes.

Crap. He’s forgotten about it.

“Tonight?”

“Yes.” She doesn’t bat an eyelash or slows down even though he knows it must have been obvious that he has fallen behind a little. “Also, I told you. Get a goddamn personal assistant. I’m not exactly paid enough to double up as that.”

“I don’t really need one.”

“Like hell you don’t,” she retorts, magically with flat tone and flat face.

Oh, well. Same old, same old. It’s not like _he_ is the one treating her like a personal assistant. She just took it upon herself to get into his personal business sometimes, and she works well with his agents (in a strange cold but effective way) when it comes to setting up things that have to do with his career. He doesn’t feel like she truly minds. She’s just, well, prone to nagging and micromanaging him.

“Why do you need to go to San Francisco again, anyway? You already graduated from Stanford, like, a year ago.”

He just continues walking and stays silent.

“Are you taking guest talk gigs that I don’t know about?”

“No.”

“So what’s the business there?”

Thinking about it, he feels that it’s a bit strange that his agent knows but his manager doesn’t about why he needs to go to San Francisco. Felicia isn’t even his all-rounded agent, just for his music and a bit of smaller scale acting gigs while his modelling career is handled by a different international agency, and Macy is pretty much all-rounded for every field he has career on. It’s just that Macy likes to delve into his personal business when she suspects it’ll have impact on his career, but she doesn’t really care beyond that. Not really.

Not that his agent cares that much either, but at least Felicia seems to have better empathy skill regardless of how explosive and strict she sometimes acts. Or maybe he’s just biased after her little Omega cousin story.

“I’m visiting a friend,” he finally settles his answer.

She walks straight, occasionally stealing glances at her phone when it chimes.

“Yeah, sure.”

He can tell from her flat tone that she doesn’t believe it (he’s worked with her long enough to discern a hint of sarcasm in her unbelievably emotionless expression), but see? She doesn’t care. Aren’t managers supposed to be buddy-buddy with the talent clients they’re managing?

“Just make sure you don’t skip any other meeting.”

Ouch. It’s been almost two months. He can’t believe she’s still bringing it up.

“So, do you want me to drive you and take your car back to your penthouse or…” Macy says again, elongating the last syllable to ask whether he wants other options.

Okay, maybe she cares. Just a little cold sometimes.

“Nah. Just drive me home right after this, then you can go home. I’ll take the cab to the airport.”

“You sure? Don’t want me to drive you to LAX?”

“It’s ‘kay. You probably want to rest anyway.”

“I’m your manager. I’m supposed to be the one giving shit about you.”

Nate just gives a little smile as a response. This is something he wants to do on his own. He’d like to have his professional team stay separate from this particular bit of his life, and it’s starting by beginning the journey to LAX by himself.

* * *

Since he’s not really planning long term stay on San Francisco, he hasn’t really thought much about the preparation for it. He thought that he could just push it as close to the departure date as possible.

Admittedly, that turns out to be kind of a mistake.

He’s completely forgotten it.

He decides to start with doing a web check-in for his flight. At least that way, he wouldn’t worry about missing the check-in time window (although he’s still a bit frantic while doing it because he has to scroll down on his email inbox for a long time to search for his ticket reservation mail.)

Then he gets his small overnight suitcase and haphazardly throws in the baggiest clothes he can find in his possession. He rushes through his check for important documents and identification then other important items, praying that he won’t accidentally leave behind something crucial.

All of this he does while clutching his phone between his ear and shoulder to call a cab from the taxi company. He smiles to himself a little when he passes by a reflective wall in his penthouse; he looks like one of those 2000s chick flicks busy business woman. It’s a good comic relief.

He gets back to task at hand fast.

By the time the cab arrives in front of his building, he’s already paced around his living room back and forth and checked his belongings in frenzy dozens of times, half-dreading to go but half-panicking that he would probably miss the flight. He immediately orders the driver to go as fast as he can within the speed limit (and crossing it when technically possible) as soon as he gets in. Thankfully, he somehow still has a little over 15 minutes before the plane boards. When he settles on his seat, he finally breathes out.

He spends his more or less 90 minutes of the time in the plane treading between sleepy limbo and overthinking. He’s exhausted and he wants to rest but his seat is too straight and a bit hard and his mind too full of buzzing thoughts. He wonders what’s going to happen after he arrives in San Francisco.

He’s never booked a room in hotel there for at least 10 months. It’s going to feel new and unfamiliar, like when he just started living there 5 years ago for his college. He feels weighed down by the fact that he can’t stay in that little kind-of disorganized but still comfy 10-story apartment anymore. It’s surprisingly depressing to think about.

Then his mind goes to feeling angry and hurt because it’s not even his fault. He shouldn’t have to feel like he doesn’t have any familiar and comfortable place to turn to. Has Matt burned or thrown away the things that he left there? Does Matt even feel guilty for practically kicking him out?

He really should.

Nate lies his head back to the headrest and closes his eyes. He is fighting it, but he finally accepts that it’s a losing battle to try to hold in the warm wetness inside his eyes.

At one point, the person on his left gingerly taps his arm and asks him if he’s okay. The stewardess also approaches him to ask whether he needs any medical attention. He declines, politely and embarrassedly.

For the rest of the flight, the people on his right across the aisle also look at him worriedly, while others look more curious. He thanks the god above that the plane is finally landing and he wastes no time in getting his overhead suitcase then getting out of the giant claustrophobic metal.

When he gets into the airport building, he realizes that it’s already the 31st of October, and it’s 0:34 AM. He alternates between power-walking and dragging his feet every few minutes because he really doesn’t want to wait too long to get to his hotel room and sleep, but he’s just so tired and everything feels so heavy. He can’t imagine how it would feel once he has to see the love of his life practically spitting on his face later on Wednesday.

* * *

He spends Halloween practically just sulking and crying (and vomiting too) in his hotel room while ordering food to be delivered there for sustenance. He doesn’t even order more than once and it’s just tomato soup with some garlic bread and French fries, along with chocolate milkshake and caramel whipped cream topping. He almost cries looking at the room service lady delivering his food because she has small but noticeable Halloween accessories and there are little kids in costumes running past her on the hallway behind her.

He just eats them once in a while, sulking then eating a piece of bread dipped into the whipped cream. Sometimes he just stares at the street below through the window, all full of jovial and playful mood and decoration, while scooping up the soup with the tinny milkshake spoon until it’s cold and soggy. When he’s not appealed by the soup any longer (and he’s finished running to the bathroom), he tries scooping the whipped cream into the soup. It tastes strange, but more bearable than just the miserable red soup alone.

Sometimes he also tries pouring the chocolatey beverage onto his bread and eating it, his other hand scrolling through his phone to look for funny jokes, and he thinks to himself, he’s so, so pathetic.

Look at him, eating a goddamn chocolate milkshake flavored garlic bread, all mushy and disgusting, while looking at the street through the glass and half-reclining on the long seat provided near the window with such empty eyes. And it’s on Halloween. He doesn’t even have pregnant craving. He doesn’t even feel like eating. He just forces himself to with various stupid mixtures of food and beverage in hand so that the baby inside him won’t starve.

What a sad young man, he thinks to himself.

He tries to eat the now also soggy potato fries with the whipped cream left, and it tastes better, but his mood is worse so he cries. His phone, which is supposed to display world news, or cool scientific, historical, or artistic article, or at least his fans’ nice Halloween massages, shows a photo of Matt looking at him while he’s posing for a selfie with such loving eyes and easy smile. How he came to that picture after googling fun facts, he doesn’t know.

God, how he’s willing to give up anything to have Matt look at him like that again.

But then he gets frustrated and angry again that he has to _wish_ for that. He deserves to get it without wishing or begging for it. He doesn’t deserve not having Matt check up on him or asking him whether he had a nice flight. He doesn’t deserve not getting a message joking and congratulating him for the tv appearance last night (although it’s not that big of a deal).

Mostly, he doesn’t deserve to go through all of this pregnant crap alone just because an OB-GYN got an information wrong, and when he tries to explain his truth, he gets really, really cruel words instead.

It still echoes in his mind.

_...the Cheap. Cheating. Whore that you are…_

_Did you finally let him fuck you in Milan…_

_‘Cause that’s all Omegas are good for. Coming at and spreading their legs for anyone they see…_

He wants it to stop. God, it’s driving him crazy. He’s got enough of those words plaguing him in the last month, days and nights, even on his sleep. He doesn’t want them echoing inside his head anymore.

His hands fly to his ears and he curls into himself. He can’t help scrunching up his face and sobbing, whispering _stop it, stop it, stop it, just stop!_

* * *

Nate ended up not getting any sleep last night, and he feels too emotionally drained and physically exhausted to really give a damn about the fact that Matt isn’t in the office waiting room with him. If he’s not coming, then he’s not coming. It’s not like Nate is going to continue going to this OB-GYN anyway. He might as well get a referral to a trusted OB-GYN in L.A. He can have his agent help him out if there’s an emergency, and he can visit the OB-GYN alone.

He props his head on his left hand, which is propped on the arm rest on the left end of the long backless seat he’s sitting on. His head feels heavy and his eyes feel itchy and burning. Nate would like to close his eyes to get a little rest for a while, but somehow, his body refuses to shut down for a quick power nap. He’s wondering whether it’s one of the common pregnant ‘perks’, being constantly tired but not being able to sleep.

When his eyes are trained emptily on the wall across him, sight swimming in and out of focus, he slowly notices something moving up and down in front of his face. He forces his mind back into himself and focuses his eyesight.

Nate sees Matt standing on the right side of his vision. He looks sort of worried but it’s very guarded and his face is almost neutralized-looking. They stare at each other for a while, completely silent with his own vacant, listless eyes and Matt’s flat and cold ones meeting awkwardly.

You see, in normal case, ‘are you okay’ or ‘how are you’ would suffice to break the tension and awkwardness, but it seems that Matt is still adamant about not wanting to be nice and just slightly caring even though it’s only for social necessity.

Oh, well.

Nate’s eyes go back to staring at the plain cream wall across him silently, not really wanting or is energized enough to break the silence. He can feel Matt’s eyes observing him on his peripheral vision as the slightly buff blond is sitting down, and it feels a bit like a victory. The feeling goes as quickly as it came.

“I thought you weren’t coming,” he finally mumbles.

Matt, who decided to follow suit in vacantly staring at the wall, furrows his eyebrows and turns to look at him. “What?”

Nate shrugs. He isn’t in the mood to repeat stuff.

After about 10 minutes after Matt arrived (or after he waved his hand in front of Nate, he doesn’t know when exactly Matt arrived, really), a staff of the clinic with a board on his chest calls out, ‘Mister Leighton!’ and he breathes out deeply before shakily standing up and walking to the slightly open door of Dr. Florence’s room. He says his timid ‘thanks’ to the staff as he walks past.

The inside is just like he remembers, but it feels different. If four weeks ago he felt some nervous but slightly excited energy around him, it just feels draining and doom-like to be there now. When the physician looks up from her desk, he feels weirdly vengeful although he pushes the feeling down and out of him. There’s no use in pointing fingers.

“Nathan, hey, can I call you that?” she says, standing up to greet him.

“Yeah, sure.”

After that, she politely but professionally asks them to sit down on the chairs provided. She follows suit across them, linking her fingers together over the desk. She gives them both deep contemplative look as if to strategically plan how to tell them a confidential national information. He realizes that he really doesn’t like it when she does that.

“First of all, I’d like to apologize for any strain in your relationship that I’ve caused with the last visit information.”

Matt furrows his eyebrows on his peripheral vision.

“Now, as I told you, Mr. Langdon, there’s something pertaining your partner that you both need to know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ;)


	9. Chapter VIII : The Real Truth about Debacle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> last night, this story hit 419 hits. Just few hours ago I checked again, it's now 422. I missed the 420 mark dammit.
> 
> Anyway, I have like 40k+ words written already, but there are a lot still that needs to be written. I can't believe yesterday I already fantasized about the epilogue of the goddamn _sequel_ like omg get your shit together and finish this first lizzy
> 
> Warning : mention of dysphoria, sexual assault, and basically mean words, but nothing bad

“Nathan?”

He doesn’t respond, just continues staring vacantly at the spot between his two friends. He doesn’t even realize Jeanne is talking to him. He does feel a pat on his left shoulder, though. When he refocuses his vision again, he sees Jack and Jeanne looking at him weirdly. He raises his eyebrows as a question.

“So it’s sashimi set box for you, right?” Jeanne asks him.

He looks down on the already open menu book below him. It’s open on the fried meal page. “Nah, I’ll take chicken katsu bento box. And ocha tea, refill.”

Jack chuckles, looking at him with narrowed eyes. “You don’t like chicken katsu.”

“Yeah, well, I tried it long time ago. Maybe I’ll like it now,” he answers casually, maybe a bit _too_ casually, while he flips the menu book randomly. The waiter who is taking their order is standing awkwardly on Jeanne’s left, not sure whether to take Jack and Jeanne’s word or his word.

“You’ve always ordered the sashimi set box. Beside, you’re Asian. You’re supposed to like sashimi.”

“I’m half Vietnamese, Jeanne, not half Japanese like you. If anything, I should be eating noodle stir-fry right now.” He nods at the waiter to signal that he is to stand by his chicken katsu choice. The waiter immediately scribbles the menu on his small book note. “And chicken katsu is Asian menu, too.”

The dirty blonde haired young woman shrugs and directs her extremely dark eyes to her boyfriend on her side. “But it’s, like, not _Asian_ -Asian, right?”

“I don’t know, I’m Mexican,” Jack responds.

“That doesn’t even make sense, Jeanne,” Nate says again, gulping the complementary mineral water left on their oriental-looking black low table. The waiter gives them a slight bow before taking his leave.

“Whatever. The point is, you always order the sashimi set box before.”

“Sometimes I’d like to have something different.” And not endanger his pregnancy by eating raw fish. They don’t have to know that, though.

“Fair enough, but you practically gave us two thirds of your chicken katsu when we visited this restaurant for the first time,” Jack pipes in.

He looks at them both with irritated expression. “What, I can’t order whatever I want now? There’s some kind of restriction for me?”

Jack raises both his hands in surrender. “Woah. Okay, _amigo_. We didn’t mean anything by it. We just thought it was strange that you order differently, and order food that you specifically said you didn’t like. That’s all.”

He shifts uncomfortably on the pillow he’s sitting on. “You’re saying it like you know me inside out.”

Jeanne narrows her eyes defensively. Jack just parts his lips a little in surprise.

“We _do_ know you, Nate. Since high-school, remember? Or did you forget we practically transferred from that god-awful private school together to Thomas Jefferson High, and then we got our first Grammy together when we were in a band, like, almost six years ago?” Jeanne crosses her arms.

“Yeah, then you kicked me out of the band. That I might as well started.”

“Oh, wow, asshole. Nobody kicked anyone out. We fucking disbanded.” Jack finally gets a little aggressive too. “And don’t say it like we ruined your life or something because you’re clearly having the time of your life being a solo artist, actor, and model.”

“That’s probably why you were having _that_ attitude back then,” Jeanne nods her head disdainfully at him, “because you always want to be the star, so you made it so that our band wouldn’t work anymore.”

“What?” Nate exclaims.

“Oh, Jesus fucking Christ. All because we were wondering why you order differently.” Jack rubs his temples and closes his eyes exasperatedly. “If you don’t want to work with us for your upcoming album, just fucking say so.”

Jeanne just gives him a look that screams _what the fuck is wrong with you_. He is about to apologize when Jeanne speaks again first. “It’s probably why Sienna dumped you back then. Or why your subsequent girlfriends only stayed with you like 3 months top. You’re truly just a little bitch.”

“Jeanne,” Jack admonishes softly, lightly gripping her right shoulder.

_Oh, God, Nathan, don’t cry now, please._

He takes in shuddering breath to calm himself down.

It doesn’t matter if they don’t know he’s an Omega, an asexual one at that, and when his ex-girlfriends (and ex-boyfriends) asked to have sex with him, he refused. It doesn’t matter that the respect he gave them, especially his girlfriends, was never returned.

It doesn’t matter that Sienna broke up with him because he didn’t want to tell her his secret (that he’s an Omega) when he was going through a late dysphoric phase of his life because he had his worst heat yet at that time. His flighty and defensive attitude back then which got surprisingly worse made her think he was cheating on her and didn’t care about her anymore.

It doesn’t matter that when the four supposedly best friends weren’t in contact with each other for 3 years after disbanding, his ex-boyfriend almost raped him and outed his secret.

It doesn’t matter that right now he’s got even bigger secrets in a form of two fetuses growing inside of him, and he’s terrified.

They don’t have to know.

* * *

By the time his pillow is soaked through, his eyes thankfully have stopped producing anymore liquid. His eyes just pin emptily at the wall near his night stand. Staring at wall vacantly seems to be his favorite pastime now.

His phone suddenly vibrates and he moves his eyes a little to look at the lighted screen. He sighs and taps the red button before going back to staring at the wall.

When his phone vibrates again few seconds later, he grumbles and snatches the item, quickly turning it off then moves to face the other way. He really would like to be miserable undisturbed now.

It turns out that universe isn’t so kind.

Not long after he turned off his phone, he gets a beeping notification that someone is requesting an access to his floor. He grumbles again, but rises from the bed nonetheless. He walks to his video intercom and accepts the transmission of the image and sound from the elevator. He frowns immediately.

“Matt?”

_“Hey, can I get up there? This elevator can’t go up without your permission.”_

“Well, yeah, that’s the point of private elevator of this penthouse.”

_“Okay, fair enough. But can I get up there now?”_

“What makes you think I would allow you up here? Aren’t rejected phone calls enough sign? Why are you in L.A, anyway?”

Matt sighs and looks down. He decides to end the transmission.

_“Wait!”_

Nate pulls his finger away.

 _“You never took any call from me! I don’t know how else I can reach you. Just–”_ Matt runs his hand through his hair, frustrated, _“–please just let me talk to you.”_

“You already did.”

_“No, I mean face to face. Please, babe.”_

“Don’t ‘babe’ me. Last time I checked, I’m the ‘ _cheap, cheating, whore_ ’ here.”

_“I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry. Really, I am.”_

“Why, because Dr. Florence said my fetuses might be naturally developing faster than women’ fetuses? Not because I told you that before? You only believe fellow medical person but not your ‘partner’?”

_“What?! No! Nate, it’s because I didn’t know to begin with. We both didn’t know. All I knew was that you suddenly had your heat right near my own, you didn’t tell me that you’re an Omega, and suddenly we were told that our babies were almost two weeks ahead–”_

“Almost one week,” he interrupts.

_“–yeah, okay, almost one week, of their supposed age. What was I supposed to think?”_

“I don’t know, that maybe you should have listened to me first, and remember that she did say she could be wrong?”

Matt sighs again hangs his head down. After a long silence, Matt looks up again. He looks straight into the camera with such genuine plea. _“Please let me see you.”_

He feels like such a weak person for finally pressing the entry acceptance button, but he listlessly walks to his living room and sits down, waiting for the elevator, nonetheless. After waiting for almost three minutes, the elevator dings and he walks up to open the steel gate covering the elevator door. Then, he steps back to wait once more.

He’s not exactly expecting anything from the other side of the elevator door, but somehow, he still feels adrenaline coursing through his body as he waits for it to unveil whoever is behind it. It doesn’t make sense. He’s got a lot of guests before, and Matt also visited him here once, so why is he nervous?

When the door finally opens completely after painstaking few seconds that feel like hours, he sees Matt standing there a bit slumped and looking unsure.

Few seconds more pass, and they just stand silently while looking at each other gingerly. Matt breaks the silence first by bringing his hand up, which is holding a plastic bag that he didn’t notice before. “I brought you something.”

Nate looks at it languidly.

“It’s ice cream. Cookies and cream flavor. Your favorite. It’s probably a bit soggy already, sorry about that, but it’s been out of the fridge for a while.”

Nate thinks of just torturing Matt with even more silence to see just how stumbling and awkward he’s going to get (he deserves it, after all), but he’s not a cruel person. So he holds out his right hand to receive the plastic bag and walks to his kitchen to transfer the content into the freezer.

When he turns around, Matt just shoves his hands into his pockets, seemingly waiting for further instruction so that he won’t cross any unspoken boundary.

“Go ahead, sit down.”

So Matt does, and Nate follows suits, but he decides to sit on a different sofa across the one Matt is sitting on. Nate thinks he sees Matt’s face falls at that.

“You look even thinner.”

He narrows his eyes. “Are you here just to insult me?”

“What? No. I’m just _–_ ” Matt exhales, “ _–_ I’m worried, you never told me anything, and I don’t even know what to say. You’re not exactly talking to me.”

“You’re the one who came here wanting to talk.”

“Yeah, okay. Fair enough.”

Nate isn’t going to back down. He already surrendered enough by even allowing Matt up here. And taking the ice cream. He should have thrown it to Matt’s head. That would be hilarious.

“Are you even eating properly?”

“Yeah.” If tiny bites of unfinished chicken katsu yesterday and 2 cups of Jell-o today count. At least he didn’t throw up today.

“You sure? You’re taking the vitamins that Dr. Florence prescribed?”

He hums and Matt looks unimpressed by his blatant lies.

Whatever.

“Nate, seriously. You’re having twins. You’re supposed to gain weight, not lose it. Not to mention our kids are growing faster than normal.”

“Why do you keep saying ‘our’?” he finally snaps.

“Because they _are_ ours.”

“You only contributed with, like, two sperm cells.”

“That’s still _–”_

“Last time I check, _‘I don’t fucking know, that’s not mine. You tell me,’”_ he quotes, feeling slightly satisfied when Matt winces at his swearing and his overall quoting.

“Now, suddenly, because Dr. Florence said, ‘ _I discovered higher than normal level of steroid hormone in his blood stream, slightly higher than what normal pregnant women naturally produce,’”_ Matt hangs his head in shame even further, “ _–_ and also ‘ _I forgot to take into account that female heats usually happen around mid to late follicular phase and ovulation phase, so because Nate here doesn’t have period, our baby dating system should be started a week before his heat started,’_ they’re your kids again?”

By this point, Nate is already standing, half-yelling at Matt. His breathing is ragged and fast and his eyes are sharp and accusing.

“A flimsy ice cream apology isn’t going to take back what you fucking said to me that day _–_ ” Matt closes his eyes, “ _–_ or undo what you did to me in the last month by forcing me to deal with this on my own, breaking your promise that you’re going to be there until the end, or kicking me out when I was practically vomiting my guts out! Remember that?”

He doesn’t realize that he’s crying until he feels something rolling down his cheek. He quickly turns around and wipes them frantically. He didn’t plan to be this emotional.

“Let me make it up to you, then. Tell me what I need to do.”

He breathes in deeply before turning around with cold look.

“Why would you care, anyway? It’s not like they’re going to be here for long.”

Matt bristles in his seat.  “What do you mean?”

“I’m aborting them.”

Just as he thought, Matt blanches and sits back. He’s not really going to do it. But he’s considering it sometimes. And it’s a good scare.

“No, you can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“You can’t do that without my say in it.”

“They’re growing inside my body, using my nutrients, upon my misery in the last ten weeks. If I remember correctly, you didn’t exactly contribute much other than forcing yourself on me that week.”

“I was in heat, too. That wasn’t _my_ fault!”

“It doesn’t matter. It’s my decision.”

“They’re still biologically mine.”

“What if they’re not? Maybe you were right. Maybe the CVS result will show that they’re Vincent’s and were conceived in Milan,” he says, rolling his eyes.

Matt throws his hands up in frustration. “For fuck’s sake, I already said I’m sorry. You don’t have to keep rubbing it off my face!”

“These babies’ existences keep being rubbed on my face to remind me that I’m not virgin anymore, not on my term, and that I’m an anomaly. I’m not supposed to exist. Ever think about that?” Matt puts his face on his palms and breathes out haggardly. “I can’t even eat my favorite food because raw fish are bad for the babies. Sometimes I throw up when I smell other foods that I usually like. And for the last month, only my agent was there for me.”

“Fine. Okay, if you want to–” Matt exhales, “–to abort them, fine. You’re right. It’s your decision.”

Nate looks skeptically at him.

“Just, please let me be involved. I want to be there for you. If this is how I can make it up, then I’ll do it.”

He looks away for a while, hiding the crumbling façade that he’s holding on. But then, Matt talks again.

“But you have to know that it isn’t safe, Nate. After the first trimester, the morbidity of abortion is higher.”

Nate scoffs. “It’s still a little over 10 weeks.”

“Is it? Your pregnancy is estimated to be around 1.1 to 1.2 times faster than normal pregnancy, so by that calculation, it’s probably nearing the end of the first trimester already. And how long do you think it takes to actually book an abortion appointment, if we can even find someone willing to perform it on you?”

He bites his lower lip at Matt’s explanation. _Just shut up_ , he screams internally.

“And do you really want to? I figure you must have talked to someone already if you really do. You probably wouldn’t even have gone through with the second visit with Dr. Florence, but you did.”

The truth is, Matt’s right. He’s already come to term with the fact that he’s pregnant and there’s nothing he can do about it other than doing the best for himself and his babies. He also never told anyone, but he did research about Omega men pregnancy before he even told Matt that he’s positive. Not a lot of record or academic journal could be found, and the ones he could find weren’t reassuring.

There were only three cases of Omega men pregnancies that were recorded (and not even fully believable). The first one was just a flimsy record saying that there was a pregnant man, but it didn’t have any more information about what became of him other than the fact that it seemed to be the first time anyone witnessed such thing. The second one was a deadly childbirth; both the baby and the man didn’t survive (although to be fair, it was in the 1880s, and medicine wasn’t foolproof back then). The third one was around the first year of 20th century, and the man died because of a back alley abortion.

Which means he is doomed either way.

He can’t help the sob wreaking his body when he remembers them, and he can’t find it in himself to refuse Matt’s embrace when he is suddenly but gently wrapped in his arms.


	10. Chapter IX : Debacle Acceptance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning: mention of eating disorder and some mean words, but again nothing bad
> 
> Enjoy!
> 
> Edit: something went wrong with the chapter so i had to delete it and reupload again ugh

Jack looks at him suspiciously and a bit coldly, while Jeanne refuses to look at him altogether with an expression akin to that of a petulant child. He feels terrible, not to mention that he has to drag Matt into this. He imagines the passersby’s around them in the park would be very, very confused as to why the three famous musicians and a random guy are sitting with various inexplicable expressions without any context. 

“So?” Jack finally asks him.

“I, uh, _we_ ’ve got something to tell you. Something that might explain why I’ve been acting weird.”

Jeanne just scoffs at him. She’s probably thinking that he feels desperate and doesn’t want them both to suddenly pull themselves out of his album production because of his attitude.

Not that he wants that. But something else is more pressing to address now.

“Well, hello, Matt, nice to meet you again, but what have you both got to do with each other?” Jeanne says.

Nate suddenly remembers that Matt was there when he was in the hospital for his gastrectomy months ago, although he just told both Jeanne and Jack that Matt was his ‘roommate’ and a friend from college (not a complete lie, they both graduated from Stanford in the same year) when they visited him. He didn’t feel that comfortable yet outing himself to friends whom he wasn’t in contact with for 3 years. As far as he knew, they were just professional colleagues and collaborators back in June.

“So you haven’t told them? I thought they’re your high school friends?” Matt asks him.

Oh, great. Now Matt probably thinks he’s still internally homophobic or something. Awesome.

“Um, well. No. I just didn’t feel like it was, uh, relevant.” He winces when he sees Matt raises one eyebrow at him, seemingly thinking _are you kidding me_.

“Look, um, the point is you don’t exactly know each other but you should, because, you know.”

Jeanne just gives him a _what the fuck am I supposed to know, idiot_ look.

“So, first of all, Matt is my boyfriend.”

Both of them raises their eyebrows with surprise.

“And these two are my high-school friends, as you know, but things happened, and then we met again for my next album project, so yeah. What happened is not important.”

He seems to be digging further into his own grave here.

“Anyway, Matt, they are Jeanne Azami Leveque and Jack Ferdinand, my high school friends and also fellow musicians–” Jack and Jeanne pipe in a ‘Hi, Matt’ to his boyfriend, “–and, Jack, Jeanne, this is my boyfriend, Matthew Langdon.”

“I knew you weren’t straight,” Jack suddenly exclaims with a grin. When he looks around and realizes everybody looks at him slightly disapprovingly, he settles down and clears his throat. “Go on.”

“Right, so second of all, now that you’re all acquainted, I’d like to apologize to you both, and probably to a lot of other people in the crew, but I’m going to start with you both. I’m sorry if in the last few days, weeks even, I’ve been acting strange and kind of like, um, ‘a little bitch,’ in your words.”

Matt bristles at the last sentence. Nate didn’t exactly tell him that his so-called high-school friend has thrown some not nice words to him. He touches Matt’s arm slightly to calm him down.

“To be fair, your boyfriend kind of deserves it, right, Jack?”

Looking at the thinly veiled irritation at Matt’s face, the olive skinned 5’10” man decides to not say anything. Jack probably doesn’t want to disagree with his girlfriend and risks 15 minutes rant in a mixture of French and Japanese or being told to sleep on the couch (also in French and Japanese), but he also doesn’t want to risk being decked by a 6’4” slightly bulky looking man who is apparently Nate’s boyfriend.

“Right. Again. I’m sorry for that. The thing is, I, um–” he glances at Matt for guidance, “–I, uh, Matt?”

“Huh?”

Nate gives him meaningful pointed look. _Help me out_ , he screams inside.

“Um, well, he’s, uh–” he gives him a _what the hell do I do, they’re your friends, man_ look in return, “–it’s more of a your thing to tell, right?”

Nate is so ready to murder him right there.

“What, guys? We don’t have all day,” Jeanne finally grumbles.

Matt gives a resigned sigh. “Look, just give them the photo.”

Nate contemplates that. Both Jack and Jeanne look more curious at the mention of a photo. They seem to take it more seriously now.

“You’re not gonna give us juicy photo, right?” Jack chuckles nervously. “I mean I believe you both are in relationship, no need for _that_ kind of photo.”

Both Jeanne and Nate gives him deadpanned look while Matt looks slightly horrified.

He finally decides to take his boyfriend’s advice as to not drag it out. He pulls out his phone from his jean pocket and quickly unlocks it to go to his photo app. He doesn’t have to take long to find the photo as the one he’s meaning to show is the latest one on his phone.

He slides down his phone to both of them. “Here.”

Jack pulls it closer to both him and Jeanne. Then Jeanne sits back.

“Okay, congratulation, when’s the baby shower?” Jeanne says sarcastically after seeing it.

Nate is about to explain to her and convince her when Jack remarks, “Jeanne, they’re having kids.”

The realization seems to slowly hit her and her face starts to look more surprised and excited at the same time.

“Oh my god. For real?”

Both he and Matt nod.

“When’s the baby shower, seriously?” she finally exclaims excitedly.

Well, that went better than he expected.

“Or is the mother the one planning it? I mean, I know usually baby shower is only attended by women, you know the mother’s friends–” Nate looks at Matt dejectedly with him getting the same look, “–but oh my god, I’m so happy for you both! Why didn’t you tell us? We’d understand if you’re gonna be, like, super nervous and confused and agitated about baby things and parenting stuff. You know we’re gonna help, right?”

Jack, who also appeared happy at first, seems to be the only one who catches how both Nate’s and Matt’s face fall at Jeanne’s gushing.

“Wait, guys, is there something wrong with the babies?”

Jeanne seems to catch on and looks worried too. “Please, don’t tell me–”

“No, no. It’s not what you guys think.”

“So?” Jack asks hurriedly.

He opens his mouth to explain but he can’t get the words out. It seems to be stuck on his throat. He sees Matt’s hand moving to his back and he feels comforting rub. Across him, Jeanne’s hand flies to her mouth, and her face crumples.

“There is no mother,” he finally says.

“You mean, she cancelled the surrogate contract?” Jack asks again.

“No, I mean, when I said there is no mother–”

He falters. He suddenly feels afraid that he’s going to get disgusted looks from the friends he started from the bottom with. He knows that when they disbanded, they became successful in their own paths, but back then, 4 of them (including Sienna, but she isn’t here right now), were peas in a pod in their high school and life outside it. They started musical career together, and they even supported him when he was scouted by a modelling agency and he got his first role while still working on the band together. He can’t imagine being tossed out again like nearly four years ago.

“–there was never any mother.”

He snaps out of his reverie when he hears Matt completes his sentence.

He suddenly hears harsh chuckle. “Are you telling me, this ultrasound picture is actually one of you? What do you take us for?” Jack retorts.

He breathes out. It feels like the first prenatal visit all over again.

“I changed my menu 2 days ago in the sushi house, didn’t I?”

Jack and Jeanne still look at him almost insultingly.

“And the last one month, I always wanted to go to other place to eat out, right?”

When they don’t answer, he continues. “The last 2 month or so, I also walked out of recording site or writing session a lot, and I always looked sick. And remember that time I skipped a meeting?”

Both his friends still look reluctant, but Jeanne seems more inclined to think about what he says. “When everyone lost their shit back in early September? Like, near 9/11 day?”

“Yes. That.”

Matt decides that tracing the wooden pattern of the table they’re sitting on is more interesting to pay attention to when it’s brought up.

“What’s that gotta do with anything?” Jack chimes in.

“Well,” he looks at Matt, who still refuses to make eye contact, for a while, “Our heats happened.”

“Look, man, not that I’m against you being gay, or bi, or whatever–although I feel kind of bummed out you never trusted us enough to come out to us back then–”

“I didn’t even know I was biromantic asexual until almost three years ago.”

“Bi–what?!”

“Biromantic asexual. I kinda have two realizations and coming outs, for being ace, then being biromantic.”

“Yeah, well, whatever you are. We don’t have anything against that, all right? There’s no need to make an outrageous story just so that your coming out seems like no big deal. It’s not. It will never. You like guys and girls, big deal.”

He’s about to speak to argues that that’s not the case, but Jack beats him to it. “The thing is, a lot of same-sex couple accidentally get into heat together. The worst is that they probably can’t go to work or sit for like a week or something. However, this–” Jack points at Nate’s phone in his own hand, “–doesn’t happen. Unless, it’s me and Jeanne, or something. Then that’s gonna be fucking apocalypse.”

Matt just rubs his temple and closes his eyes.

“What? Is there another coming out that we missed? Are you secretly trans? If you are then, again, it’s no fucking big deal, and I’m honestly starting to feel really fucking offended that you’d think so lowly of us. Thinking that we’re gonna disown you as a friend or something.”

“It’s not!” Nate finally snaps. He then impatiently snatches his phone away from Jack, quickly scrolling the app photo again to look for another photo that can convince them.

“Here.” He practically shoves his phone back. Jeanne just side-eyes the phone screen while Jack looks like he only starts looking at the screen just to appease Nate. After quite a long time, Jack gulps. He puts down the phone on the table.

“Is that why you’ve been wearing baggy sweaters?” Jeanne surprisingly asks.

The three men turn to look at her.

She sighs as if she’s giving in. “I thought you were self-harming and bulimic. I mean, you go to the bathroom a lot, and one time I heard you vomiting, but it was, like, really faint. You also look a bit too thin for comfort, and you hardly eat. I was worried, but I don’t know how to approach you that personally.”

Nate looks at her with scandalized expression. Is that how he appears this whole time?

“I mean, behind closed door, our band disassembling process wasn’t quiet or peaceful, and every time I tried to be friendly to you in the last few months, you seem to still treat me like a strictly professional friend rather than best friend since high school.

“Like, I get it. You were right. We did kind of treat you like we were kicking you out of the band–and siding with Sienna back then, but you never told us your side of story. Only she did. So, I mean, I understand if you were to do self-harming and ED, it’s without telling us. I was just hoping you’ll get help,” she looks at him and Matt contemplatively, “but it’s not that, is it?”

Jack turns to her and looks at her incredulously. “So you believe them?”

She shrugs and sits back. “Well, I mean, the evidences seem circumstantial, but they’re a lot and they add up. Not to mention he’s always been dodgy when we asked about his type.” Her hands start playing with her own phone on the table. “And we have that picture, that medical letter. It looks pretty legit to me.”

Jack seems to consider his girlfriend’s words while looking at photo again.

“I’m just glad it’s not what I’m worried about, okay?”

He feels surprising amount of relief washing through him when she looks at him softly, reminding him of the time in high school when he sometimes had a problem at school or with Sienna.

Funnily enough, Jeanne choses that moment to chirpily say, “We should tell her.”

When Matt narrows his eyes questioningly, she adds, “Oh, I mean Sienna Nguyen. The twice New York Times bestselling author? She’s his ex, by the way. Dated for, like, 4 years until 2013 before we disbanded. She’s our ‘secret fourth member’, A.K.A our other lyricist back then. Very cool lady.”

Nate gives her _are you kidding me, you’re seriously saying that to my boyfriend_ look.

“I mean, not that you’re not cool. What do you do, by the way?”

Jack covers his face in his palm and mumbles ‘oh jeez’ into his hand. Matt tries not to look offended while answering her with a short “I’m biomedical engineer.”

“Oh wow. That _is_ cool. You’re super smart then.” Jack almost looks relieved, then Jeanne talks again. “I tell you what, you should be sperm donator for all the single ladies who’d like to have kids. You have that dreamy blue eyes and blond hair, and very yum and tall body with extra smart brain. Those women would love that.”

Jack face-palms again. “Jeanne, please.”

“I mean, I know that you’re gonna have kids of your own–hopefully you both aren’t lying out of your asses–but still it would be cool to spread good genes.”

“Jeanne, oh my god,” Nate exclaims and hides his flaming face behind his palms. Matt just looks purely horrified. He’s not even trying to be subtle.

“You do know I’m gay, right?” Matt tells her.

“Oh, I’m not coming after you,” she laughs heartily, “Wouldn’t do that to our boy here.”

Below the table, Matt is discreetly typing a note file on his phone that says _She’s crazy._ He just gives him an _I know_ smile then finally breathes out relieved sigh. As crazy as she is, he realizes that she’s still his best friend. Along with Jack, too, of course. That’s why he agreed to tell them about it.

Now he just have to go through the rest of his mental list.

* * *

The smile on his face is still lingering halfway through the elevator journey up to his floor. He’s quite…happy. Relieved may be more fitting to explain how he feels, but happy is fine too. He’s told his two best friends and they were positive towards the news and the secret (although he knows Jack might take a lot more time and convincing to completely believe him and be used to it).

He hasn’t felt this easy for weeks. He’s glad to feel like he can finally breathe again.

He’s not completely content, of course.

What he has with Matt is still fragile and newly rebuilt, and even though they might have hugged it out, he still feels stilted around Matt.

Like now.

He looks at Matt through his peripheral vision. He’s leaning his back against the stainless steel wall behind him in an easy and comfortable manner. It’s like nothing has ever changed. If he pays really, really careful attention, though, he can notice that it isn’t completely the case. Matt gives him as much space as he did in their first months of dating. It’s as if he’s completely surrendering under Nate’s judgement of what they can or cannot do yet. He really appreciates it.

He’s glad that he can have him around again, but he doesn’t feel like completely falling into the flow of things before the first visit to Dr. Florence. He just discovered a side of Matt that he thought Matt wouldn’t have a little over a month ago. Even though he grew out of the wariness around Matt that he felt in the beginning of their relationship, thinking that his paranoia caused by his own ex was unfounded, he can’t think like that now, no matter how much he loves Matt.

He’s willing to give Matt another chance, but he realizes right now, it’s more for his babies’ sake than his own.

As if sensing what’s on his mind, Matt calls out to him softly.

“Hmm?” he hums in acknowledgement.

“I’m glad you wanna work this out with me again, you know.”

His eyes dart slightly at Matt. It turns out that Matt’s already looking at him so intently and sincerely.

“I know it’s going to take time, and it’s going to take more than just accompanying you to routine visits or coming with you to people we need to tell about this–” he gestures a bit at his stomach, “–baby thing, but I’m willing to do whatever it takes to make it right again. Make _us_ right again.”

“Okay.”

“I mean it.”

He stays silent. Nate concurs Matt isn’t done yet.

“Whatever you need, I’m gonna be there for you. And I promise, I’ll trust you and believe your words more from now on,” he takes a breath and releases it, “and there will be no more of this, Alpha behavior or boys will be boys… things that I’m going to do, or say, to you.”

When he looks at Matt again, his boyfriend is looking at him even more deeply, if that’s possible.

“I’ve missed you, a lot. And I still love you.”

His heart stops beating when he hears that. It feels like it’s been forever since he’s last heard it and he can’t quell the craving for hearing it more. He wants to tell Matt to repeat it, over and over again. Instead, he settles with, “Me too.”

The corners of Matt’s lips start tilting up tentatively before he visibly bites his lower lip. They both seem to want to say more, but they’re interrupted by the ‘ding’ of the elevator, telling them that they’re on their intended floor already.

After the sliding metal door opens completely, Nate fiddles with the outer steel gate to open it and steps out, followed by Matt. He doesn’t really know what he’s planning to do or say, and he’s guessing Matt doesn’t either. But it’s okay. It’s good that they’re taking the first step to repairing what they have.

Later that evening, he thinks about making Matt stay at his penthouse for the night instead of letting him go back to his hotel before he needs to drive back to San Francisco tomorrow. He reminds himself, one step at a time, or they’re going to stumble and fall again if they run too fast, so Nate lets him go

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yo since it's (kinda) already the end of the first part of the story, i'm wondering if you guys want to see snapshots of other characters (including the upcoming ones) or parts of the story from other characters' pov. Maybe even oneshots of like matt-nate before dating or something
> 
> also lemme know what you think guys, bc idk man i'm curious. Kudos are great but like i wanna know why this story deserves (or doesn't deserve) your kudos


	11. Chapter X : The Thing's First Problem

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OMG IM SO SORRY FOR BEING LATE FOR MORE THAN 3 DAYS HOLY SHIT BUT I HAVE A GREAT EXCUSE OKAY (well more like a reason, not excuse). So basically my very close college friends, at least some of them, have graduated earlier this year (more like last year, but the ceremony was a few months ago). They're like super busy with works, job interviews, and internships and stuff, but last weekend they were like, 'hey, we're not busy this weekend, let's hang out?'. So we did, and we went shopping, sightseeing, just hanging around being stupid non-adult kids and it was really lit. And today after reading _The Long Leash_ latest update (anyone following that story too? bc i need a fandom to vent my frustration to) I was like 'hmm, I feel like I forgot something, what is it' and I remember that I basically fucking skipped 2 updates. I am so sorry guys.
> 
> Look i'm gonna try to make it up by getting out 4 updates this week, okay? No promise tho, but I'll try getting another chapter up in wednesday, friday, and sunday (at the same time, around 3.45 pm gmt, sorry seems like this week is the week i have to start changing my uploading schedule).
> 
> Enjoy and lemme know what you think :D

“Right, so it’s the last session of the recording, and half of the songs in the album are already half-processed, including the planned first 3 singles. Is that correct?”

Nate pushes back the headset he is wearing, letting the item dangle around his neck. He steps back from the microphone and takes his water bottle to uncap it and drink a gulp before capping it again and putting it down.

In front of him, separated by the huge clear glass, is a team of sound engineers, several session musicians, few of the songs co-writers, and producers, including his executive producer, Brandon Jones, who just asked him (or the team?) the question. He hears a murmur of ‘yeah’ from them and he nods.

“Good, well, then hopefully the album can be released on spring, just as planned, right?”

He smiles triumphantly remembering that this album he’s been working on very hard for months (and will be a little over a year by the time it is released) is really coming into a tangible shape. Nate is sure all the other who have been involved are happy too with the album progress, including his executive producer, though he was almost never in the ‘field’, be it in the brainstorming, writing, or recording sessions. (He suspects that Jones’ happiness is mainly for profit reason, but hey, he needs the financial backing from the record label anyway). Nate’s so proud of the production and the album in general.

Until he sees Jack and Felicia’s faces on the middle and on one side of the sound mixing room.

Both of them look tense, and on the other end of the room, Jeanne is pointedly looking down and playing with her pen. Macy, on the other hand, is obliviously typing away on her phone.

His own face falls.

“So it really has to come on spring?”

The rustling and general noise of the people shaking hands and finishing up stops suddenly. Jones halts his movement in the middle of standing up and looks sharply at him.

“Well, the recording is already done. All we need to do right now is mix them into official release audios and finish up the polishing of each song.”

Nate gulps. God, he wishes he could just blurt out that he might be heavily pregnant, or worse, in labor at the time.

His producer turns his body to face him fully. “Then we do promotional interviews, performances, radio visits, talk shows appearances, maybe some teasers, then drop the full album. That’s it. You’ve done this for, what, 4 times already? You know the drill.”

“I know, but–”

“And before that you already did 3 with Leveque and Ferdinand since 16 or 15, 1 that was indie album, didn’t you?” Jones looks at Jack and Jeanne shortly. His two friends just shrug.

“Yeah, just wondering if, you, know, we have calculated that there might need to be a change in the schedule and it has to be pushed back,” he responds, trying to sound as nonchalant as possible.

“You have pushed back the release date already by being in the hospital last June, for, what, almost a month?”

Jack’s head turns fast from his mixing panel to Jones while glaring. His Latino friend instinctively mouths ‘what the fuck’. His half-Japanese friend, on the other hand, discreetly makes a money gesture with her right hand and rolls her eyes. Again, Macy just looks bored and continues checking her phone.

“He was sick, Jones. Do want him to continue writing songs while on operating table?” Felicia retorts.

“Obviously not sick enough that he could go to Milan right away after that for that Alexander McQueen Fall/Winter season.”

“I didn’t, I still continued recording a bit,” he argues.

While they seemingly get a little tenser, the other people in the room visibly rush to get out. They nod slightly at him through the glass then scurry out before they have to be involved.

“Yeah, but you mostly put it aside for prepping the walk.”

Nate sighs.

“The point is, it’s settled, the singles are going to be dropped in the end of this month, on December, then on the end of January. Then the album is going to be fully released around March, just as planned, okay?” Jones continues.

He, too, finally walks away from the panel with a ‘See ya, Leighton’ thrown over his shoulder before he’s out of the room.

Nate takes off the headset and puts it back on its place, grabbing his water on the way out of the recording room. His two friends stand up to walk up to the door separating it with the sound mixing room. Felicia stays put but looks suspicious, and Macy looks impassive. When he’s out of the recording room and looks at their worried face (though Macy doesn’t seem too care), he lets out resigned, shuddering breath.

“Right, Leighton, you don’t have anything else today, so get your much deserved and needed rest and I’ll get mine,” Macy suddenly says while shouldering her bag. All four heads, all who were prepared to open their mouth (except Nathan, of course), turn to the figure currently standing up.

“Yeah, he really should, considering his condition.”

Macy halts, and Nathan glares at Jeanne.

“What condition?” Macy asks suspiciously.

“Well, you know, he’s–”

Nate immediately hisses and put his hand on Jeanne’s mouth.

Jack immediately goes ‘wait, she doesn’t know?’ at the same time Felicia goes ‘wait, they know?’

“Know what?” Macy asks, voice dangerously threatening.

“Nothing, just worried about the gastrectomy. They think I’m still not fully recovered,” he smiles tightly at his manager.

“That’s like, 5 months ago, how could you not be recovered yet?” she asks again incredulously.

“Exactly.”

They all silently wait in tense, palpable silence for Macy to react. She just narrows her eyes on Nathan for a long time.

“Right. I’ll get that out of you eventually,” she finally says.

Macy immediately turns around and prances out of the room dramatically.

Nathan exhales deeply and turns his glaring eyes back on Jeanne. “Why would you do that?”

“Well, I thought she knows,” Jeanne says defensively.

“And she should,” Felicia interrupts, hands crossing on her chest.

Nate rolls his eyes and looks at Jack, waiting if he’s going to express a piece of mind too. Jack just shrugs with hands on the air and says, “Well, I can’t disagree. She’s your manager.”

“I won’t just blurt out this thing to anyone I see.”

“Macy isn’t anyone. She’s your manager! We’re both are the ones who have to take the brunt if you suddenly have to disappear when you’re too heavily pregnant. And I prefer to work with someone who knows what the fuck–”

“Language!” Nathan glares with one hand immediately going to his stomach.

“–don’t care–is going on,” Felicia finishes.

Jeanne narrows her eyes at his hand. “Um, pretty sure your babies can’t hear yet. How far along are you anyway?”

“I don’t know,” he breathes out weakly with frustrated hand running through his hair.

“What do you mean you don’t know? You already had that ultrasound.” Jack exclaims incredulously.

“Look it’s complicated, okay? Which is why I don’t want to take a break yet. I’m planning on keeping up with my schedule until I absolutely can’t. I’ll just wear dress coat on public and red carpet which can hide my stomach if it gets big enough.” All three of their jaws drop incredulously.

He sighs. “If worse comes to worst, then I’ll fake medical emergency. The media will eat that up.”

“And your publicist is gonna chew you up.”

He takes a breath and is about to open his mouth again, but Felicia interrupts him once more. “And do you remember that you’re supposed to start filming for _Vacuum_ early next year? What are you gonna say to the producer?”

“I told you. Sudden medical emergency.”

“Just like that? No preparation for us whatsoever?”

“I’m sure Patrick has dealt with worse before me. I’m not the only artist who needs to disappear for a while.”

Jeanne frowns. “That’s kind of a dick move, though. At least inform him and Macy as your publicist and manager.”

“Yeah, Felicia’s right. When you have to take a break, if it’s too sudden, they’re gonna be the one who have to take the brunt of protecting your reputation and contracts,” Jack pipes in.

Nathan narrows his eyes irritatedly at them both, thinking _why are you here,_ while Felicia throws her hands in the air and exclaims, “Thank you! At least your friends are smarter than you.”

“I won’t tell anyone unless it’s absolutely an emergency and I’m not taking a break for as long as possible. Period.”

The three of them just shake his head at him.

“I don’t fucking understand how you were even elected as the student body president in our high school,” Jack says, rolling his eyes and walking away.

Jeanne packs her bag and walks to Jack. “Yeah, you never listen.”

“Okay, that isn’t fair. I was elected fair and square because people realize it’s a good thing to have someone who refuses to be walked all over.”

Felicia walks away to get her own bag. “And now you’re walking all over us just because you pay our salary.”

Nate’s jaw drops. “I’m not…what? I just don’t want to tell people about my secret, okay? What is wrong with that? It took me, like, years to tell these two–” he gestures at Jeanne and Jack, “–and that’s only because my boyfriend advised me to. Because this, unfortunately–” he gestures at his stomach now, “–happened and it changed me into ‘a little bitch,’ quote unquote.”

Jeanne hangs her head down, but she tries to look impassive and not guilty.

“And how do you suggest I tell Patrick, Macy, my other agents, Brandon Jones, and all the producers of _Vacuum_ and even _Hello, Hello, Mariah_ later? Huh _? ‘Oh hey, look I’m a genetic mutation called Omega man and I’m pregnant.’_ ”

The three of them turn to Nate again and look mildly uncomfortable with his outburst.

“ _‘Sorry, can’t be there for the premiere. Also, sorry too I can’t do the filming for_ Vacuum _next year because I might be going into labor. And, Jones, would you mind if I do the promotional appearances with pregnancy dresses? No? Okay, thank you!’_ Is that what you all want me to say? Why don’t I just tweet it with #NathanIsPregnant while I’m at it?”

He is breathing hard and glaring at three of them. He doesn’t realize that there’s a drop of tear running down his cheek until Jack pointedly looks at the said cheek. He quickly wipes it away and berates himself for being so emotional.

“Look, okay, we’re sorry if we come off like we’re cornering you to come out or something,” Jack starts to talk softly. “We’re not. We just think that it might helpful for _you_ that you don’t keep this thing to yourself.”

Jack continues again when he looks away angrily. “I mean, for few weeks we just thought that you have this difficult diva attitude, and Jeanne thought you have eating disorder. And then you told us, then we understand. We can help you right now, because we know what’s going on.”

He scoffs. “Really? What kind of help have you given me other than acting like an entitled friend?”

“Okay, I think you should stop thinking like being knocked up gives you a pass to be an asshole,” Jeanne pipes in.

“Jeanne,” Jack admonishes, holding her arm. He shakes his head weakly and says, “Not helping.” Then he looks at Nathan again.

“Look, Nathan. I’m sure you know that this career of yours is nothing like high school, not to mention with secret this magnitude. Unless, you’re lying and you’re scared of being caught like a dumb loser for making it all up.”

Nate opens his mouth incredulously, but Jack holds up a hand. “No, okay, if anything, this behavior of yours really seals the deal for me that you’re pregnant. Surely unplanned too, because you’re so nervous and agitated all the time.”

“What I’m trying to say is, that thing–” he gestures at Nate’s stomach, “–is gonna grow and they’re gonna be little people that you cannot hide forever. Yes, you can just say you adopted them later when they’re born, but you’re 23, that’s a little bit too young for serious commitment like that, don’t you think?”

“Little people?” Felicia asks suddenly. “Like, plural?”

Jack sighs and looks at Felicia. “Yeah he’s having twins. Don’t you know?”

Nate’s agent just glares and opens her mouth even wider.

Jack turns again to see Nate’s reaction. He then continues when he sees that Nate might be willing to hear more. “You need people to help you build that up so that it would be believable and work with you if you have to make adjustment to your career and schedule. If anything goes wrong, it’s not just gonna be the talk of the school cafeteria. It’s gonna be the world’s talk, especially with your family’s standing. And it’s your dream and job on the line.”

Nate look at the two women on the back. Both of them cross their arms on their chest like the bossy women they are.

“And remember, Nathan. We’re talking about two people being attached to you here. You have to plan a break whether you like it or not, and it’s not just ‘as long as possible.’ You can’t push yourself now because the babies need you to be healthy. You can’t just take the equivalent of 14 AP classes and tons of other extracurricular activities on the side like you did in high school. Can’t have you fainting in the middle of the hallway again, can we?”

Felicia’s jaw drops even further. “14 AP fucking classes?”

“Yeah, it’s people like him who make the rest of us Asian population get a bad rep for being overachiever and a nerd,” Jeanne says with a chuckle.

When both men respond her with a glare, she immediately says, “I’m kidding.”

For good measure, Jack says, “So tell your other agents, your manager, and your publicist. You’re letting them take a huge chuck of your income for a reason. Make them help you plan your break now, and your comeback too, of course, but only after you’re okay. If you don’t give them work, might as well give your money to charity.”

“Also your family. Do they know already?” Jeanne pipes in again.

Nate closes his eyes and inhales. God, the list is just getting longer and longer.

Felicia sighs and starts talking too. “Yeah. It’s not difficult, Nathan. You just have to tell the people who need to know and agree on when you should take a break from working. That’s all. We’re not telling you to announce it to the whole world and quit it for good.”

_Sure. Like it could be done that easily anyway._

“Besides, weren’t you the one who asked Jones to push your album release back?”

Right after Jeanne says that, he feels like it’s the last straw. Yes, she makes a good point but that’s exactly why he feels the anger bubbling and spilling over him. He feels like everything is thrown at him all at once and the blame and pressure come from every direction, and he’s pissed and scared and upset. Never in his life has he felt this helpless and cornered before.

He stops walking towards the sound mixing room exit and intentionally inhales as loud as he can before exhaling just as loud.

“Are you guys just staying back here to lecture me and rub it off my face that my entire life has been derailed because of this? That I’ll have to deal with the responsibilities of things that are not even my fault?”

Jeanne opens her mouth. “We’re not–”

“Save it,” he says, still fuming and shaking with dangerously low voice. “Just know that I regret telling all of you this.”

He doesn’t wait for any of them to talk again before stomping away.

* * *

The evening still can’t improve his mood.

At one point, his phone is incessantly buzzing on his nightstand, yet he doesn’t have the energy to pick it up. He knows he’ll need to stop letting himself stay dissociated from the world and face it, but he doesn’t feel like it now.

After a while, though, the buzzing annoys him enough that he’s forced to move his sight from the plain wall of his bedroom and look at his phone.

He sighs, picking up his phone and laying his head back against his headboard.

“What.”

 _“Um, hey, Nathan. I’m not bothering you, am I?”_ his boyfriend asks carefully.

“No.”

_“Oh, okay. Good then.”_

“Hmm.”

_“Are you okay?”_

“Hmm.”

_“Babe?”_

“Stop.”

He can practically feel the shock rolling off from the speaker by the palpable silence and audible breathing sound.

_“You never stopped me before. What’s wrong now?”_

“Too mushy. Don’t like it.”

_“Are you sure you’re okay? You can talk to me, you know.”_

“I only said I don’t like getting pet name. Why do you assume there’s something wrong?”

_“I… I don’t know. Last time we met, you weren’t like this.”_

“That’s a week ago.”

_“Yeah, but…”_

“What? You haven’t talked to me or see me for a month. How can you know how I’m like?”

That’s a low blow, he knows that. He just feels like cornering someone else for once instead of being cornered constantly.

_“You’re still not over it, are you?”_

“When have I ever said I am?”

He’s totally going to hell for that.

Matt audibly sighs and gulps, and it sounds kind of shaky. He almost feels guilty. Almost. But then he remembers that all of this mess is Matt’s doing, anyway. Maybe Matt miscalculated his heat and forced Nate’s own to match his. Maybe. Who knows. All Nate knows is that all of this mess isn’t his fault.

“Why are you calling, anyway?”

God, he’s such a heartless jerk.

Matt chuckles sadly and incredulously as if he’s utterly disbelieving that Nate really said that to him. The older takes a while to answer, and when he talks, his voice trembles a bit.

_“I just wanna talk to you, Nathan. We talk to each other every day before.”_

Nate pulls his phone away and inhales deeply. It just does something to his emotion when he hears that Matt is so close to probably crying, and it’s because of him.

 _“If I’m bothering you, you can just tell me. I’ll hang up. I’ll just–”_ Matt chuckles shakily again, “ _–I’ll wait until you feel okay, if that helps.”_

By this point, he’s sure that Matt has at least poured one drop of tear or something. There’s no way a voice that shaky isn’t a crying voice. He’s stuck between feeling horrible and rolling his eyes because how weak he thinks Matt is. He heard worse from his boyfriend and was left alone for nearly a month. This is nothing.

So he impassively says, “Okay.”

Matt sucks in a breath. _“Okay. Okay. I was about to talk about the CVS result and, uh, Thanksgiving, but okay. I’ll leave you alone now. Sorry for disturbing you, I guess.”_

Nate narrows his eyes. “CVS result?”

The rustling on the other end ceases suddenly.

_“Uh, yeah. But I mean, it’s okay. I can just tell Dr. Florence to show that to us in the next visit. I’m sure it’s nothing. She didn’t tell us to come right away, so there’s probably no problem.”_

“Why didn’t she call me instead? I already put my number there,” he says exasperatedly.

_“I don’t know. Probably because she knows you’re busy so she called me instead?”_

“Or because she knows you’re the only one who wants to know about the result.”

_“Excuse me?”_

Nate rolls his eyes. “I wouldn’t have taken that CVS test if it weren’t for the paternity test. I’m under 30. There is almost next to no risk of the kids having chromosomal abnormality.”

He shudders remembering procedure of the test. He literally had a quite sizable catheter and a tool with two metal sticks to enlarge his opening (called vaginal speculum or something, he doesn’t remember) inserted into him. The catheter was used to take some tissue samples near the placentas to be inspected so that it can be seen from the cells genetic code (which is identical to the babies’) whether the babies have chromosomal abnormalities or not. Obviously, it can be used for prenatal paternity test too as it has the babies’ DNA.

The worst thing is that because he just found out he has twins from the ultrasound (which was an absolute shock on itself), the catheter had to be inserted a few times to get both babies’ near-placenta tissue samples. It wasn’t comfortable the first time, and it was definitely bordering on painful the subsequent tries.

Dr. Florence didn’t really advise it to be done because of its miscarriage-inducing risk and he was certainly not eager to put any metal inside himself. However, Matt brought it up after Dr. Florence told them the babies might be naturally developing faster than normal fetuses.

 _“What about that CVS test you told us on the first visit, can that make sure the babies’ DNA? I mean, their development is already the same as ten-week pregnancy, right?”_ Matt said at that time.

He was so ready to stab Matt with the speculum right then.

He hears another sigh from the other end of the call, pulling him out of the memory of the cold, pressing and sharp sensation inside his body.

“I didn’t actually want to do the test, you know. And it gave me cramping the next day, do you know that?” he mutters.

Matt gulps and sighs again. He can imagine Matt leaning his face on his palm, frustrated.

 _“What am I supposed to do to make it up to you, Nate? When I called two days ago, you were fine, but now you’re like this again. What did I do wrong?”_ Nate hears a small sniffle. _“I’m trying really hard, but you just won’t give me anything to go for. You don’t even sound like you want me to try or talk to you ever again. What do I have to do? Tell me.”_

He closes his eyes.

“Just get the result yourself. Or not. Don’t care. And Matt?”

Matt doesn’t respond.

“Don’t get your hopes up. I’m there probably only for a day. I won’t be there for Thanksgiving, so spend it however you want.”

He doesn’t wait for a response before ending the call. He doesn’t think he’ll get one anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CVS test is real, you guys. And it looks scary as fuck. Don't get pregnant after 32-33 'cause the chance of chomosomal abnormality is higher and you're probably gonna be advised to do the test.
> 
> I'm kidding. Go be pregnant whenever you want. BabyCenter forums mamas say the test is not actually that bad.


	12. Chapter XI: The Thing Life

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so fucking sorry for leaving you for more than a month guys. I swear I didn't mean to. I got sick for like several weeks around the time of my midterms and obviously I had to take care of it and rest, then I had to catch up on my classes lecture notes and assignments and stuff. Not to mention I had to take midterm tests on my own because everybody did already, so yeah. I had to do a lot of catching up and resting. It was also around the time for me to move to a new place (because my old place is an absolute shithole, and it was very very pronounced at the time I was sick and buried in overdue assignments).
> 
> To those whose comments I haven't replied in the last chapter, I'm sorry too for that.
> 
> There will be another chapter tomorrow (don't worry, this time I'm going to keep my promise). It will be a continuation of this chapter ( _lizzy, obviously, duh_ ), and it will be quite long. So look forward to that. 
> 
> Enjoy!

Nathan’s adept fingers continuously string the acoustic guitar propped on his thigh while his headphone is put lopsidedly on his head, his right ear uncovered. His expertly trained tenor voice drips softly from his mouth accompanied by the guitar sound and for once in what seems like a long time, he feels calm.

_“You like me all storm, remembering I’m yours…”_

Once in a while, he glances at the dark reflective wall in front of him to see his dark grey eyes (appearing a bit darker than the actual colors) with slight upturned edges staring back at him behind his glasses. That is probably the only telling sign that he’s not completely Caucasian.

_“It feels like you’re hold’ing beast of the world…”_

His skin looks fair, if not pale, and unblemished, although the parts below his eyes have shadowy color that he might have to put some concealer on for his upcoming live first single performance. He looks thinner than the beginning of the year, and he’s never quite gotten back that look since his gastritis, but it’s okay. He’s sure his fans would appreciate his sharper, higher-looking cheekbones and more defined jawline.

_“It makes you feel grand, and I should feel wrath…”_

He flicks his head back a little when the strands of his bang start dropping to his forehead, and his straight gleaming jet black hair goes back to staying out of his eyes. If there is one good thing about this whole…pregnancy, it’s the fact that his already healthy-looking hair looks even more luscious than usual. Even his cheeks have slight pink flush on them and his lips look unusually redder without his chap stick, although they still looked cracked at some places.

_“Fact is I’m content, my back ‘gainst your chest…”_

He’s not vain, not really. It’s just nice to feel good about himself sometimes. Especially since he’s been feeling horrible in the last few weeks. He’s going to take any chance he can get to feel better about himself.

_“I’m volatile, untamable sight…”_

His sight goes back to the strings of his guitar and he continues singing his heart out, letting himself settle into the role of an unanchored and free young artist that he would like to be, only him and his dreams along with those who come to adore and support him on his road. It’s quite easy when he’s having a good day like now. He hasn’t felt any nausea strong enough to shatter that illusion.

_“I’d warn you away, but you make me swa–”_

Until his intercom forcefully pulls him out of it.

He groans.

He taps his phone screen to pause the non-publicized instrumental music of his song and pulls back his headphone. After the guitar is put down on the sofa, he stands up and walks to his intercom. Who’s going to rustle his very rare peace this time?

Nate takes a deep breath and pushes the accept-transmission button.

_“Heeeey, my fellow Asian dude! You busy?”_

“Jeanne?”

_“Nah, you’re not busy are ya! Your recording is done. The one who’s busy right now is Jack and your PR staff.”_

“What do you want?” he asks her with flat look.

_“What? I can’t visit a friend now? C’mon!”_

“I’m not in the mood for lecture, if that’s why you’re visiting me.”

_“Nooo! I promise it’s not. Can I come up? Or at least you come down here and hang out with me? Pleaaaaase? You got Jack busy with your album late stage production. The least you can do is be a friend for me now!”_

Nate continues giving her expressionless face, but he doesn’t think it’s going to work. She’s been known to defy the Oriental stereotype by being quite pushy and stubborn. Or she’s just being stereotypically French. Who knows.

 _“Pleeeeeeaaaaase? You can’t be mad at me for real? Please hang out with me! Pretty please?”_ she begs one more time, batting her eyelashes at him through the camera.

In the end, all he can do is say “get away from the door,” and presses the button to let the elevator go up.

When the elevator is up at his floor and open, he mischievously chooses not to unlock the steel gate of the elevator just to get back at her. It’s the rare time he’s reminded not to take his manual mechanical gate for granted.

Jeanne, however, is not impressed.

“Asshole, open up,” she says with crossed arms.

The corner of his lips tilts up slightly. “You open it up.”

“Not funny, Nate.”

“Kinda funny to me.”

“Come on, lemme out.”

“You just said let it up. I did what you wanted.”

“Seriously fuck you, Nate,”

He laughs and walks up to the elevator to unlock the gate. “Watch your language or I’ll cut off the wires so that you’ll be forever stuck there.”

“You’ll be stuck, too, you dummy. This is your only way to get down and out of the building.”

“Nah. I can get heli up on the roof. This is penthouse, I have heli parking spot.”

Jeanne rolls her eyes and steps out just as Nate pushes the gate to the side.

“So, why are you here?”

Jeanne immediately turns around to give him a deeply offended look.

“I mean like, do you have any specific thing you’d like to talk about or do?” he corrects himself as he locks the gate again.

“Well, the latest hollywoodlife.com pages and E! front site don’t feature a headline saying you’re found smooched on the ground, bloody and all. So I gotta check if you, you know, drank bleach or drowned yourself in your bathtub or something.”

The unimpressed look is now on Nate’s face.

“I’m kidding. Kinda. I mean, look, yesterday you got me worried, okay? You never exploded like that, not since the year we disbanded.”

He suddenly feels guilty about his bursting emotion yesterday afternoon. Granted, he did feel guilt seeping into him yesterday (especially after the call with Matt), but he curbed it down and try not to feel it. He felt terrible and he didn’t deserve to feel guilty on top of that.

“Hey, look. It’s stressful. And batshit crazy. I get it. I just wanted to give a piece of advice yesterday, and sorry if it wasn’t my place, okay?”

He regards Jeanne without giving away anything from his expression. After a while, though, he feels his reserve crumbles under Jeanne’s apparent worried face.

Although he still feels a bit irritated by Jeanne for interrupting his peaceful music session and pissing him off yesterday, he can't help the softening of his eyes. After all, her behavior comes from within her caring as a friend.

"So, still friends?" Jeanne asks part playful, part hesitant. Her hand with her pinky finger out is presented to him.

He sighs affectionately and smiles a little. Jeanne follows suit with her worry and hesitation visibly melting away.

"Still friends," he says, linking his own pinky finger with hers. Her smile fully blooms then.

"Right, so, go get changed now."

Obviously, he is very surprised by the sudden instruction.

"What?"

"You heard me. Go get changed then we'll go out."

"Woah. Okay. I did not sign up for that."

She puts her hands on the pockets of her beige coat then turns around with dramatic queenly move, complete with the swooshing of her knee-length dress, to go sit on his sofa.

Also with dramatic regal move, of course.

"Yes. You did."

"Um, no? You said 'visit you here or go out' not 'and go out'?" he says incredulously.

"Yeah, well, I rectified it. Now shoo. Go change. I'm waiting."

He's considering taking back his 'still friends' statement right there and then. But he still goes up to his penthouse second floor to change in his room.

"Wait. What's wrong with this outfit?" he suddenly asks in the middle of the stairs.

Jeanne gives him an irritated look.

"It's November. Are you seriously going out with sweatpants and cotton sweatshirt?"

That's a good point actually.

So he continues climbing the stairs and change his clothes to thicker pair of dark jeans and a shirt with quite warm black cashmere sweaters.

When he meets her back downstairs, she's typing away on her phone screen, seemingly engrossed in a conversation with whoever it is she's talking to. He walks to the coat hanger near his elevator gate and takes his dark grey coat.

"Where are we going?" he asks as he puts it on.

"Nowhere. Anywhere."

Is she joking?

"Seriously, Jeanne?"

"Yeah. We're gonna go out to wherever we like."

He rolls his eyes and unlocks his gate anyway. "Why can't you be docile and calm like how Omegas are supposed to be?"

"Like you are," she chuckles, "beside, since when do you care about how types are supposed to be anyway?"

"Since I become friends with you and realized you're probably much less annoying if you're actually stereotypical."

"Oh, fuck off, Nate."

"Language!"

* * *

"So, where are we going, again?"

Jeanne, since the beginning of their journey, has been almost ignoring him completely in favor of gluing her eyes to her phone screen. It wouldn't be that bad if he weren't dragged out of his place unwillingly and he at least knew where they are going.

"Uh...there," she answers distractedly before smiling slightly at her phone.

"There where?" he asks, unamused.

"The place."

Okay. If she's being cryptic one more time, he's seriously going to turn around and walk back home without caring what she says.

Or whack her head. Whichever he feels like when it comes to it.

"Jeanne. Seriously."

She looks up and looks at her right.

"There," she finally says, her eyes fall onto the sparsely populated coffee shop with a patio near a park-like place that is not really a park.

"What are we doing there?"

"Talk. Drink coffee," she replies with her eyes back on her screen, "or in your case, drink hot chocolate like the wimp you are."

"Rude."

"More like _truth_."

He rolls his eyes but walks to the table on the patio with her anyway.

"All right," he says as he sits down, "so am I ordering, or are you?"

"Wait. Just a sec."

And she's back to ignoring him.

He huffs out with annoyed look. "Who are you texting anyway? Jack is busy, you said it yourself. Are you texting another guy?"

She looks up and furrows her eyebrows before answering, "No. But even if I were, Jack wouldn't be mad anyway. We're open, so I wouldn't be cheating."

"Wait, really?"

"Yeah. Now hush."

He can't spend too long being quite surprised and thinking about her latest piece of information, so he goes back to being annoyed and crossing his arms on his chest.

A few minutes later, she puts her phone on the table and looks up with satisfied and almost knowing smile. "Done. Now all of my attention can be poured into you."

He looks questioningly at her, trying to figure out what's up with her. Then he figures it out.

"Okay, who's coming?"

Her smile gets wider as if she's feeling proud of him.

"Just you wait," she tells him with a sing-song voice. "And while you do that, I'll order for both of us."

He widens his eyes as she stands up and walks into the shop building.

"Wait, hey!" he yells as he twists his body around to her direction.

Of course she would ignore him. Why wouldn't she?

He straightens up his body back when he realizes that she's not going to listen. He decides to surrender by looking at the park-like-but-not-park place across the seat he's sitting on. The shop is right beside the intersection that divides the row of culinary shops and the park-like place and the seat is right on the edge of the patio, so he at least has nice greenery view as he waits.

It's when he's propping his head on his hand and looking at the little kids playing across the street that he catches the sight.

A young woman with straight jet black hair and skin only slightly lighter than Jack's and a bit darker than his own is striding confidently on the sidewalk of the park-like ground. She's wearing tight-fitted black dress with blue flower patterns on the side that are not completely covered by her navy velvety coat. Even from afar it's very apparent that she's of Southeast Asian descent.

Like him.

She also looks very familiar, yet the appearance she’s sporting is the opposite of what he remembers. If he has an old friend who looks like her but was usually in favor of faded skinny jeans and unsightly hoodie with plain no-makeup face, the woman now has a look that would turn any straight man’s head. Or lesbian woman’s. Or bisexual person’s. Whatever.

He's going to kill Jeanne right after this.

He hasn't completely composed himself from the surprise of seeing the woman when she's already in front of him.

"Nathan?"

He gulps and straightens up.

"Hey, Sienna. I haven't seen you in a long time."

As if it's not enough surprise, he notices a man on her side, standing slightly behind her. The man is sporting slightly wavy black hair and killer trimmed beard that he's never going to be able to grow himself. He's also quite brown skinned and visibly of South Asian descent, possibly Indian, standing probably few inches shorter than himself but with just as much confidence as the young woman beside him. Nate has a very good guess of who he is. At least in terms of who he is to Sienna.

"Yeah, you're right. He's Roderick, by the way," she replies with friendly but quite guarded smile.

Roderick steps to the front and extends his right hand.

"Hi. I'm Roderick, Roderick Chopra," Roderick greets him with a non-committal smile.

Nathan shakes his hand. "Hi. Nathan Leighton."

"He's my boyfriend," Sienna chimes in, as if Nate couldn't have figured it out by himself, "and he is, um, my... friend. Childhood friend."

Nate raises an eyebrow at that.

4 years dating and she chose to introduce him to her current boyfriend as a childhood friend. Not that it's technically wrong, but okay.

Roderick seems to also question her choice of word with his eyes.

"I thought he was your..."

"Well, yeah, we went out for a while in high school. But he's a just a friend."

Nate gives him a slightly awkward smile.

"Well, either way. I've heard a lot about you. Also from Jeanne too."

"I hope it's not all bad," Nate replies politely.

"Oh, no. It's the opposite actually. No need to sell yourself short," Rodrick says while pulling the chair across him and sits down. Sienna is doing the same.

“I’m glad,” he responds, activating his professional red-carpet smile.

“Besides, it’s kind of hard to hear bad thing about you when literally every single person on the internet and news outlet is pouring compliment about the ‘21st century DaVinci’, isn’t it?”

Sienna laughs good-naturedly and admiringly at the man beside her as if he’s cracked the joke of the history. Nate feels something strange and largely forgotten inside his gut.

Not that he’s jealous that that particular look of her is not directed to him anymore. He’s not.

“Yeah, sorry about that. The media goes overboard sometimes.”

“Too bad it’s kind of in your job description, huh?” Roderick says, flinging an arm over Sienna’s back rest with an absolute easiness and calm confidence.

“It’s not too bad usually. A lot of people mean well.”

“Well, at least your job hazard isn’t potential lawsuit for malpractice.”

Nate raises an eyebrow. “Malpractice?”

“He’s a doctor. Still a second-year resident, though,” Sienna chimes in.

Oh wow. She’s really stepped up her game after they broke up, hasn’t she?

“Anyway, you guys wanna order something? I’ll go get them for you. Jeanne didn’t tell me you both are coming so…”

“Oh no, it’s cool. I’ll order for me and Sienna. You both can catch up. I’m sure you’ll have a lot to talk about,” Roderick says lightly while standing up, his hand brushing Sienna’s shoulder.

He really is a confident fella, isn’t he? If it were him back then, he probably would be worried and wary of another guy, let alone an ex, talking alone with Sienna. Probably why she’s with Roderick right now instead of with him.

“Thanks, honey,” Sienna responds with a smile sweeter and calmer than he’s ever seen her done before.

Sienna’s eyes follow Roderick’s figure walking into the store until he’s gotten inside and out of sight. Then she faces Nate again.

He doesn’t know whether to be hopeful and happy or dread this opportunity to talk one-on-one with his first love and first ex.

Finger crossed everything’s going to go well. He really doesn’t have the emotional energy for any more trouble.


	13. Chapter XII: The Thing's Past

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just as a disclaimer, I'm not a med kid nor have I a really close friend in medical field who I can just consult to whenever I want about the life of resident doctors, so if there's any inaccuracy, just please know that I've tried my best in researching info about them. Also, please be nice when you wanna correct stuff. Otherwise I'm gonna be sad and cry. 
> 
> Also, this is probably the most bleh-filler chapter or the most crucial and informative one so far, depending on how you look at it. Either way, lemme know what you think, and enjoy!

“Sorry about it,” Nate hear his ex-girlfriend suddenly says.

He looks up from the coffee shop table. Sienna is looking at him with somewhat polite expression, although he can feel the I’d-rather-be-anywhere-else-right-now vibe.

“About what?” he replies questioningly.

“Well, Jeanne didn’t exactly tell me you would be here. You probably aren’t planning to see me.”

He frowns. “It’s not a bad thing, Sienna. I’m glad to see you.”

She drums her black-painted nails, something he notices is also not typical of her back then as she couldn’t be bothered to do or wait for anything appearance-wise (but what does he know?), on the wooden table. She seems to be trying to avoid eye-contact with him. If anything, it looks like it’s _her_ who’s not planning to see him and takes it as a bad thing.

“So, you’re here now. I thought you wanted to live in New Haven after graduating.”

“I do live there. I just have book tour plus signing here tomorrow, and Jeanne wants to hang out.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, just for the weekend.”

A complete silence passes for a few seconds.

“And your boyfriend? I was under the impression that resident doctors are super busy.”

“Well, Roderick isn’t on rotation today, and he still has leave days, so he decided to come with me here when he knew I’m having book-signing. Just to see what Los Angeles looks like.”

“Oh.”

“Hmm. What about you? What have you been doing lately?”

“Me? Oh, not much.” Just juggling his _Hello, Hello Mariah_ promotional contract duty and album production while trying not to vomit every day.

“Really? Jeanne says your recording is done, and your single is going to be released this month.”

“Oh, yeah. Just some polishing stuff. I’m not the one who’s busy right now.”

“Hmm, Jeanne told me Jack probably can’t see me while I’m here because he’s busy with your album last production stage.”

He nods a little.

“Weird, isn’t it?” Sienna suddenly says. When he looks up, he sees her scrunches up her nose slightly with a bit of humor in her eyes.

“What?”

“Jack and Jeanne? I mean, who would have thought, right?”

He smiles. “Yeah. I was surprised too when they told me last March when we were about to start working on my album.”

“They’re like, the last people I would have predicted to get together. They used to be the most no-hetero kind of friends. You know, the one who would mutually bro-zone each other.”

He laughs a little.

“Yeah, well. The future works in a funny way. People would probably be surprised about us too.”

She raises her eyebrow. “Us?”

Crap. Why did he say that? Oh geez.

“I mean, you know. We were, like…” he trails off, opting to raise both of his hands in a ‘you know’ manner.

“Supposed to be unbreakable?” she asks with a hint of sarcastic lopsided smile.

He licks his lip a bit nervously, not really sure how to take that. “Well, not that dramatic.”

“Of course not. Why would we?” Sienna says, looking down and pursing her blood red lips almost bitterly.

He closes his eyes with growing frustration. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Well, how did you mean it then?” She looks at him dead on the eye with exaggeratedly neutral face as if to challenge him.

Why is he now suddenly having a secretly uncivil talk with his ex? He’s pretty sure he didn’t plan it on his day before.

“Just that people probably know us as a couple for so long, they’re probably surprised to know we’re dating different people now.”

“Hmm.”

They finally go back to their silence again, and he feels somewhat sad that this is how it turns out for what he thought is his most memorable and tightest friendship he’s ever had.

“So, Jeanne is friends with you both, huh?”

Sienna hums non-committedly.

“Since when?”

She furrows her eyebrows with a corner of her lips slightly tilted up almost patronizingly. “Since forever,” she answer with a ‘duh’ voice.

“And Jack too?”

“Yeah.” Again, with the ‘duh’ voice.

So all three of them have been in contact with each other for a while, but not with him.

“You knew they both are together?”

She continues drumming her nails on the table, almost as if she would be content to just ignore each other. He doesn’t hope too much for a response.

“’Course. They started out FWB, but then decided they had too much feeling in it, though still with no passion for ‘prison of relationship’,” she gestures the air quotation mark, “Their words not mine.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. A little after I started going out with Roderick last year.”

Man, how much has he missed this whole time?

“So, how did you meet Roderick?” he tries again.

Sienna looks up at him almost warily.

“Last year too,” she finally opens up, “kind of funny story actually, because I was dating a different guy back then and I was bringing him to ER because he was an idiot who has terrible hobby.”

So she’s dated at least 2 guys after him, he thinks as he asks, “Terrible hobby like what?”

“Like being an asshole who talks before he thinks and gets drunk way too often than what is healthy,” she sighs. “Jeanne already told me to dump him for so many times, but I didn’t listen because I was insistent on giving him the benefit of doubt, although I didn’t really feel that much for him,” she sits back on her seat, “until that day.”

He furrows his eyebrow confusedly.

“Bar fight,” she tells him.

“Wow.”

“I know. And Roderick was the one treating him that night. He was a new resident doctor, but like, already so swift and good at it. My ex didn’t appreciate having me eying another guy.”

“So he broke up with you?” he inquires incredulously.

“No, I broke up with him on the spot when his drunk ass made a scene and made Roderick’s job harder than it already was, along with all the other doctors and nurses there.”

He giggles a bit at the story.

“Roderick immediately but discreetly slid a piece of paper with his number on it when I was walking my ex out of the hospital, saying ‘just in case there is any emergency.’ With a fucking wink,” she continues with a smile. He laughs lightly as she ends the story, although he can’t help the slight, almost unnoticeable wince when she drops the F-bomb.

“Sorry, I mean a ‘freaking’ wink,” she tells him after when she sees his wince, “I forgot you don’t like cursing.”

“Nah, it’s cool.”

“Anyway, you know Jeanne. Once I told her about it, she started threatening me with spamming my phone and bombarding it with calls until I texted him and went on a date with him.”

He laughs a little. “Just like us both back then, huh?”

“Yeah, she literally kept throwing, like, balled paper with ‘GO BE BF-GF’ written inside to the back of our heads in the class until you asked me out. Remember that?” she recalls.

“Yeah. Tenth grade, right?”

They giggle a bit, then sigh audibly, each looking down on the table.

“So…what about you?”

Nate looks up. “Me?”

“Yeah, you said ‘dating different people’, so you’re with another person too now.”

“Oh yeah, I did, didn’t I?”

“I mean, if you don’t want to tell me that’s fine. I just thought I would like to hear it from you than from Jeanne or Jack.”

He weighs it in for a while. He doesn’t have any doubt that Sienna isn’t a close-minded person, but maybe hearing about an ex-boyfriend dating another man is a bit of strange thing, or even a problem for her. But he’d still would like to have a faith in her as a friend.

“What have Jeanne and Jack told you about me?” he decides to ask.

“You’re in a relationship with someone else and you probably are gonna have a kid in a foreseeable future.”

His heart drops. Jeez, who else are they telling about this?

“But they bullshit a lot so, I’m taking it with a grain of salt, of course. I mean you’re 23.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. So?”

He opens his mouth, but hesitates. What is he going to tell her? That it’s true? That he’s going to have _kids_ in a few months? That he’s an Omega?

“Um…”

Sienna looks at him with an almost hopeful expression. It’s clear that she wishes that he’s going to trust her enough to spill whatever it is that’s going on with him, just like how he always did back then before the disastrous first adult heat cycle that messed up his entire psyche and eventually led to their breakup.

“So they told you… a lot, huh?”

Sienna inhales and straightens up on her seat at the question, hand going into her coat pocket to produce her phone and play with it by rolling it around between her index finger and her thumb. That is a habit he knows she’s always had when things get awkward, serious, and overall slightly to extremely stressful in an interaction with other people.

He can’t believe out of all people, she’s doing that with him. Have they grown that far apart?

“Well, yeah. Quite…a lot. More than I could imagine.”

He doesn’t know what she means by that. Is that why she’s nervous? Or is it just because of talking to him generally?

“Something about…heat trouble.”

He can physically feel his heart dropping to his gut when she says it.

“But, I mean, you’re a careful person. I just find it hard to believe that you would accidentally knock up a girl because you didn’t take precaution when you were about to ride out your heat, or at least took suppressants.”

Oh wow. She’s _way_ off the course. He doesn’t know whether to be happy or offended that she doesn’t immediately catch the truth that it’s not _him_ doing the knocking-up, rather than him being the receiving end of it.

“Well, I mean, you’re not wrong,” he replies, trying to keep himself from smiling, or worse yet, laughing at the sheer hilarity of her completely wrong and ironic guess, “but sometimes, you can’t control the other person.”

She furrows her eyebrows confusedly, then her eyes widen, and her expression eventually morphs into a furious one.

“What the _fuck_? Are you telling me you–”

“No! Look. I swear on my mother’s grave that I have never taken advantage of anyone, and I never would. You know that.”

“Fuck knows if I do. Last time we met you’re an absolutely distant and jumpy bastard, so what do I know about you?” she says loudly, demeanor completely changing from unsure and shy to forward and angry.

“Sienna, I swear it isn’t like that.”

“Like what, then, Nathan? You didn’t exactly deny you’re having heat trouble, just like what Jeanne told me, and you ‘can’t control the other person,’ quote unquote. What the fuck else could that mean?”

“Shhh, Sienna, keep it down.”

“Fuck your keeping down, oh my god.”

He frantically looks around to see if they have caught anyone’s attention, and yes, they have. Several people who are walking on the sidewalk of the coffee shop patio have faltered to look at them both. Across the street, several parents and kids who are playing around stop moving about and openly stare at them.

“Sienna, I swear that’s not what happened!”

Sienna, who’s staring at him with furious and disbelieving look, is breathing hard, but as she stares at his almost panicked but sincere face, she gradually calms down. Nate can see the wheels turning inside her head, although he doesn’t know what kind of conclusion she’s going to reach.

“So it was previously consented, but you both just weren’t careful beforehand? That’s why it’s heat trouble?”

 _Oh geez,_ he thinks as he face-palms tiredly.

“What?” Sienna cries out, looking utterly lost and frustrated.

“Look, Sienna, there is no ‘her’, okay?” he says with an air quotation mark. As he predicted (and is absolutely sick of because it seems that it’s never gotten any less frustrating to explain it to anyone), she looks even more confused.

“Okay, remember the last few months when we were dating? Around late 2012 to early 2013? You said I was being suspicious, jumpy, and closed off or something, right?”

The only respond he gets is her still looking like she’s witnessing an extraterrestrial creature trying to communicate with her.

“You know how when you’re late teen, you start to get this full-blown adult heat cycle where it’s not just some flimsy, light feverish feeling that lasts for probably only 3 days? But it’s actual disorientation and flared up libido to the point of you feeling like you just swallowed some LSD?”

“How’s that got to do with anything?” she exclaims incredulously.

He inhales deeply and closes his eyes. Out of all people he has ever known in his life, Sienna is arguably among the most important one. He hopes that this reunion actually mends their friendship rather than obliterates it further than it already is.

“First of all, that is why I was acting distant back then,” he says, taking out his own phone out of his jeans pocket and tapping it a few times to get to the thing he’s looking for, “and second of all, that’s why it becomes ‘heat trouble’ to me.”

Eventually, he finds the thing he was looking for on his phone, and he gives the phone to her.

She looks skeptical when she takes it from him, but she gives him a questioning look for a split second and looks at the screen anyway.

After a minute of her eyes darting from side to side while reading whatever is on his screen, her eyes gradually squinting in disbelief then becoming wide almost in shock, she finally looks up at him with gaping mouth.

“You’re messing with me right now.”

He raises an eyebrow as if to ask her, ‘do I look like I’m messing with you right now?’

She keeps looking at his phone then to him back and forth, her mouth opening and closing in a disbelieving manner. “That’s impossible. That only exists in historical scripture that’s not yet proven to be true or correct.”

He keeps his cool, unwavering look.

Finally, she says, “But… you’re a Beta. Like Jack, right?”

“You know, I’m starting to get real sick of people saying that to me.”

“In the 11 years that we were friend, you’d never… you’d never shown any sign of being an Omega!” she sputters.

“And you think you could recognize the sign?” he snickers sarcastically.

“It’s Omega sign! It can’t be hard to see.”

“Sienna, you didn’t even know Jeanne is Omega until she told you. You thought she was an Alpha like you. How on earth were you going to figure out that I am too?”

“I don’t know! We’ve been friends for so long even before we started dating and before we even met Jeanne and Jack! I should have…I don’t know…should have figured it out or something.”

“Yeah, well you didn’t,” he softly says, “but it’s okay. At least now you know why I was acting like that before.”

“I still don’t understand, though, Nate. Even if you’re an Omega–” he gives her a deadpanned look, “–well, I mean you are, but just because you are, why does it have anything to do with how you were acting back then?”

And that’s the hardest part to explain.

She tilts her head to the side with expectant look.

“Because you’re right that I was a Beta, or at least acting like one, and when I had my first adult heat, that illusion was shattered and I was reminded that I was different, and I wasn’t supposed to exist,” he explains with slight shudder as he remembers how hopeless and betrayed by his own body he felt back then.

He also remembers how terrified he was of what his body was doing to him and of the pain that wasn’t supposed to be in normal heat. He even had that bloody scare again, making it seemed as if he were having a menstrual cycle.

“Suppressant for me doesn’t even exist yet, and when I tried my younger sister’s suppressant, it messed up my body even more. I didn’t know how to deal with that. I guess I took it out on you,” he finishes.

Sienna looks at him with a look that’s a mixture of sadness, sympathy, and a hint of protectiveness. He’s seen that look several times back then, especially when he was telling her about his mother’s sickness and about how Celia and Elizabeth treated him back then.

Before he knows it, he hears chair scrapping sound and he suddenly feels weight dropped on his lap with arms engulfing him in a tight hug.

“Why the fuck didn’t you tell me before?” Sienna says with her face buried on his neck. He can hear slight sniffling sound from between her words.

Is she…crying?

“Why the fuck haven’t you ever thought about talking to me? You know I would have tried to help you! You know I wouldn’t have given a shit about what type you are!” she continues wailing, her hug not loosening.

“I’ve always thought it was something wrong that I did! That maybe I wasn’t making you happy enough! I thought you had your eyes on someone else, and as much as it hurt, I would have been happy as long as you are–” she pulls her head back and looks at him with red eyes and tears brimming on the edges, “–and as long as you still talk to me and stay my best friend, but you never said anything. Do you know how fucking painful that was, you bitch?”

He would have been offended by the name-calling, but he thought it was fair.

So he says, “I’m sorry.”

And he is. He really is.

As he gently wraps his arms around her to hug her back, he remembers that he broke the promise that they made together, that no matter what happened, even if they broke up, their friendship should never be compromised.

He remembers saying that with her on their first date, when he was nervous about her not wanting to be in a relationship with him. He remembers the pinky promise they did afterwards, then kissing her cheek which slowly moved to her lips.

That was the first instance of how he felt like he was the safest he’d ever been. He knew he could count on her as a friend or a lover.

He also remembers the years before that, when they were seven and they were on the second grade. She was a new student, an immigrant girl who could barely introduce herself in English, but he felt a profound sense of camaraderie because she shared half of his ancestry and he wanted to learn his mother’s language and have someone speak it with (although he’s never gotten that far with the language) while teaching her English the best way he knew how.

From then they became inseparable, always choosing each other for group project and sharing and telling each other everything. He’s always been there to give people a piece of mind when they decided to make fun of her, and she always watched him when he recited a story character’s dialogue with various makeshift costume, never once forgetting to clap for him and tell him that he was going to be a great actor someday, although she didn’t always understand what he was saying.

She was the first person he showed his music that he composed himself to, and he was the first person she showed her writing and poems to, while he proofread and corrected some of the language mistake in them.

Although they are a boy and a girl, she had no qualm about telling him that she presented when she was 11, all despite the social norms and possible teasing or reprimanding if people found out she told such a private thing. She told him excitedly that she knew what type she is already, and she was satisfied with it.

(He felt bad that he couldn’t be that open to her back then, but then she assumed he was a Beta and that was the end of it. They went back to being best friend.)

Even when his mom was diagnosed with terminal cancer and she got increasingly weaker and sicker, Sienna was there to console him. She was also the only one who hugged him when his mother was pronounced dead while his eldest sister was hugging Ellie and Harper was hugging baby Luna who had no idea why her mommy was covered in white sheet. Sienna let him cry on her shoulder for as long as he liked.

After that, his dad insisted on transferring all of his kids to private academy as the only one who kept them in normal public school was Nate’s mom. Sienna followed him, begging her own parents to transfer her there because he told her that he was dreading it and he wouldn’t know anyone.

Fast forward 3 years, 2 complete manuscripts, 2 successful theater auditions, and almost a dozen of amateur song recordings later, they went to high school level of the academy, and Jeanne and Jack entered the picture. All four of them became best friends who surprisingly had equally high interest in musical art and disdain in elitist and ignorant environment among bunch of rich privileged and mostly white kids. So they all transferred to a public school together, all three of them helping him convince his dad (fight him) to let him go to school of his choosing. Of course, Sienna was the staunchest supporter.

Even when he was going through the denial of his father’s new relationship, she was there with him helping him reason with himself while never dismissing what he felt. She was also there to support him when he auditioned for his first big screen film role and congratulated him when he got it, along with Jack and Jeanne as they all worked on their first indie album.

She was there, both as best friend and girlfriend, when their band and his own career as an actor took off, eventually getting signed with a major record label and getting nominated for acting awards in their young teenage era.

Even as he tries to remember why he decided to keep a distance, it seemed so stupid now because Sienna is right. She would have been there for him if only he decided to talk. Even Jack and Jeanne wouldn’t ditch him despite having friendship with him in significantly shorter amount of time than him with Sienna.

So why did he throw away what they all had together?

“Seriously, Nate, fuck you,” she says again, seeming to completely forget he has a particular dislike for swearing. He supposes he can let that slide.

“Well, someone already did, as the letter I showed you said.”

“Oh my god, shut the fuck up,” she chokes out, muffling her voice on his neck.

They both just half-laugh and half-cry a bit for a while. It’s way much better than what he’s expected, and he can’t imagine anything that can ruin it.

“Ehem.”

Nate immediately stops hugging Sienna and twists his body around painfully to look behind him. Sienna also pushes at him to push their bodies apart while frantically wiping at her eyes (which he sure hopes for her sake has water-proof mascara). It’s probably useless as there is no way she could slid off his lap fast enough. They’ve already been caught with her face on his neck and her sitting on his lap.

“Oh hey, honey, you were awfully long in there, what did you order?” she pours out fast with slightly high-pitched voice.

Roderick is standing with two cups of steaming beverages beside Jeanne, who is also holding two hot drinks in her hands. His face looks unreadable.

“Roderick, I swear I didn’t set that up,” Jeanne says, giggling nervously with a worried look, “I was just trying to get them be friends again.”

Nate pushes Sienna away until she stands up and takes a step away from him. He too decides to stand up and face his ex-girlfriend’s current partner.

“We didn’t… we weren’t… trust me it’s not like that–” Nate stutters.

Crap. Crap crap crap. This guy is going to kill him.

Roderick calmly puts the cups down, _way_ too calmly, and faces him again.

He suddenly worries about how angry Felicia is going to be and how loud she will scream at him when he says his face won’t be up to live performance standard. Also, how fast will the paparazzi be this time to spread around a photograph of his bruised eye?

“I have a boyfriend,” he exclaims fast without thinking.

Roderick, who initially looks _too_ cool and neutral than he would like, slowly changes his expression to a confused one.

“You’re gay?” he asks.

“No! I’m…well, bi. But it doesn’t matter. I have a boyfriend, so we’re not–” he frantically gestures to both himself and Sienna, “–you know.”

For a while, he just waits for a reaction from Roderick. Both young women are also waiting with bated breath.

A thought suddenly occurs to him.

“Oh my god, I _do_ have a boyfriend.”

Understandably, all the other three look at him like he suddenly grows horns.

“Why the fuck do you sound so shocked?” Roderick calls out incredulously with a split second look at Sienna that says ‘what on earth were you thinking when you decided to date this idiot?’

“I have to go,” Nate ignores him.

He immediately turns around. He is ready to bounce on his feet and just run back to his penthouse, so he does.

“Hey, what about the drink?” Jeanne calls out.

He stops his step and turns back shortly to snatch the cup from her hand, muttering a quick ‘thanks, and have fun in L.A, nice meeting ya,’ before running again.

He’s got another relationship to mend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> EDIT 18/4/17: I uploaded [ a oneshot](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10663890) in Matt's perspective. It's happening between Chapter X to Chapter XIII.


	14. Chapter XIII: Like It or Not, the Thing Is Staying

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case, you don't know. I uploaded a oneshot in Matt's perspective around the time of Chapter X and just before this chapter (Chapter XIII). [ It's here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10663890). You don't have to read it, but it will make it more, idk, understandable, I guess?
> 
> I'm not Yale student or alumni (although that used to be my dream school *cries*). If the bits about Yale library stuff (which is fucking awesome, I just love libraries man, and Yale's is like the bomb) are incorrect, feel free to give me some info so I can edit them. Btw, this chapter hasn't been edited and proofread as much as the previous ones, so if there's any mistake or anything that's weird (or you just see a way to improve stuff), go ahead. Be nice, though. I'm way too sleep-deprived to deal with mean criticism ;___;
> 
> Also, I wanna ask you guys if you prefer the previous tagging with no relationship and characters tags, or do you prefer the one now? I feel like that's way too many tags, but I don't know if it's the norm or not to include the relationships and characters in the tag for original stories on AO3.
> 
> Lemme know what you think of this, and enjoy!

In the three days since he started typing a message for Matt, Nate has probably revised it hundreds of times. He either deleted a word or two and typed different ones, deleted them and wrote the same thing again, or completely deleted them and retyping them again (usually only to end up saying, again, the same exact thing with just slightly different spellings). He either did it after meeting with his agents, having an important call, doing promotional interviews and photoshoots, or when he had nothing to do at his place.

Still, as Monday morning rolls around, he still hasn’t sent the text message that he was so pumped up to send last Friday after reuniting with Sienna.

Sometimes, he psyched himself up until he was about to tap the green paper plane button, but he never did. Other times, he went to the contact menu and just looked at Matt’s name there, but he did nothing. Most of the times when he was frustrated with the whole thing, he wished that his screen would light up to tell him that Matt was calling him.

Still, no such thing has happened.

He is still staring at the note app where he puts his text message draft on, and he swears if he has to think about whether to type ‘tmrw’ or ‘tomorrow’ again, he’s going to fling his phone out of his window. He’s just going to apologize to whoever gets hit by it later.

_Hey darling. Hw are you?_

_Sorry I hvnt contacted you in a few days. Also sorry about the last time u called. I guess I was having a bad hormone day & I know I shouldnt hv taken it out on you but yeah_

_Going to SF tomorrow. So can we talk?_

Why can’t he just tap the send button, dammit!

“Don’t look. Just tap. Don’t look. Just tap. Don’t…”

He closes his eyes while facing his ceiling with his thumb hovering above the send button. He can feel his hand and his thumb shaking, and he wishes that his thumb would accidentally tap the button so that he doesn’t have to think about it any longer.

“Agrh,” he grumbles, throwing his phone to his bed angrily.

He guesses he’s going to have to wait for another few hours to collect himself and get the nerve to continue.

Just after deciding that, his phone suddenly vibrates and shocks him out of his wits, making his heart jump painfully inside his chest. When he looks at the screen as his heart is slowing down, he feels somewhat disappointed that it isn’t who he wants to call him right now.

_Big Sis H is calling…_

He exhales tiredly and berates himself for thinking like that. It’s his sister, he should be happy, so he grabs the phone and taps the screen to accept the call.

_“Natey, my baby bro! How are you doing! You haven’t called in a few days, you know that? What kind of brother are you?”_

He huffs out a small laugh at his older sister’s rapid fire speech.

“Well, hello to you too, Harper. Nice to hear from you.”

_“Seriously, where on earth have you been? You can’t be that busy. I’m your sister. I should be on the top of your priority list. I’m so offended right now.”_

He laughs. “I’m sorry, dear sister of mine. I won’t forget to call you next time.”

_“You better not! We haven’t talked in 4 days. Do you know how much we can miss in that time?”_

“Oh, absolutely a lot. There has probably been an apocalypse happening already. And now we’re in the process of being swallowed whole by the sun.”

_“Exactly. Then we can’t catch up anymore.”_

“Better make this call worthwhile, then.”

They both giggle as a response.

_“So, what kind of paparazzi-induced bullshit do you have to put up with that has kept you from talking to me?”_

He narrows his eyes while tracing his sheet pattern with his right index finger. “Why do you assume it’s something to do with paparazzi?”

_“Dunno. I saw a blurry picture of you and a girl on your lap, like, two days ago.”_

Oh great. That photo has already been spread around.

 _“But, I mean, it’s the media. It’s full of bullshit,”_ she laughs lightly, _“And I don’t think it’s that big of a deal. Not many people talk about it. Too blurry to be confirmed as you.”_

He breathes out relieved sigh and laughs too. He’s going to have to talk to Sienna about it, see if she gets in trouble with the press or with her boyfriend.

“Nah, there’s no trouble with paparazzi, or with that picture, just…”

_Just the babies growing inside me and a boyfriend who I’m not talking to right now._

He sighs tiredly.

_“Nate? Hey, you okay?”_

No, he’s not. But he knows what he really needs right now is just to blurt it out, he thinks as he leans his head back against his headboard.

 _“Natey, if there’s any trouble, you know you can just talk to me right? Any problem or secret, you know you can trust me,”_ he hears her sister tells him very softly.

God, he’s so grateful that he has her. She’s been his constant rock and ally, both in the big bad world and the battlefield that is his home when Celia is there with him along with her condescending and unexplained disdain, or when his dad starts to show his protectiveness dressed in micromanaging tendency. It cements his reserve to just…let it out all to Harper.

He’s always been keeping things to himself, fearing for the reaction and consequences that he cannot know for sure and cannot control. It’s tiring, it’s exhausting, and it’s definitely never given him the safety he was aiming for. If anything, keeping things to himself has always been disastrous, if anything that’s been happening lately is to go by.

Well, not this time. Not with Harper. He can trust Harper.

“I’m pregnant with twins, and I’m not talking to the father right now,” he finally confesses.

Wow. That is surprisingly… easy.

_“What?!”_

“You heard me.”

There is several seconds of silence where his confidence in his sister is slowly being eroded and he’s starting to think that maybe he can’t trust her that much.

_“When?”_

“What when?”

_“Everything, when did it all start? Tell me everything.”_

And so he does.

From the fact that he’s had a boyfriend since the beginning of the year, the heat disaster back in September, the trouble with his agent and the press after that, the incorrect baby dating information over a month ago and the subsequent fight, trouble with Jack and Jeanne about the whole thing, the mess last Friday with Sienna and her boyfriend (Harper is surprised about it, thinking that he’s no longer in contact with her), to the fact that now he doesn’t know how to talk to his boyfriend. He doesn’t leave any detail behind. He doesn’t even think he can because once he starts, it’s hard to stop spilling everything.

Harper never interrupts him, only giving occasional humming and ‘okay’ to signal that she’s taking in everything he’s saying. He keeps spilling everything to her until he doesn’t realize that he’s on the verge of tears from all the frustration that he’s been feeling in the last few months. When he’s finally exhausted all the complaint and rant inside him, he involuntarily sniffs.

 _“Okay,”_ he hears her saying.

“Just…okay?” he asks incredulously.

_“You wanna know what I think?”_

“Uh…yeah, that’s why I told you.”

_“It’s harsh. You sure about it?”_

Okay, wow. Great. So she’s going to judge him. Fantastic. Just what he needs.

“Okay,” he tells her anyway.

He hears Harper inhales before saying, _“I think you’re an idiot.”_

“Excuse me?” he exclaims.

 _“You’re a huge dumbass, regardless of the fact that you graduated from Standford with double degree and have the ability to do all kinds of art,”_ she tells him, earning an unamused look from him. _“I feel like whoever Dad hired to test your IQ back then should lose their license because there’s no way you have an IQ of 150.”_

“You’re not making me feel better, you know that?”

_“At least I’m not actively sabotaging my own interpersonal relationships with everyone I know and putting myself in unnecessary physical and emotional strain. Like, did you listen to yourself?”_

He is ready to open his mouth to argue, but then he thinks that, yeah, she’s kind of right actually.

_“Although your boyfriend is also a huge dumbass because he didn’t collect more information first before accusing you. So you guys are totally meant for each other.”_

“So, you don’t have, like, problem with the whole thing?”

_“The only thing I have problem with right now is the fact that you’re a giant idiot who insists on making everything more complicated than necessary.”_

He breathes out relieved sigh and sags on the bed.

_“Seriously, Natey sweetie, you gotta call him. I mean, you’re about to have routine prenatal check again two days from now, right? Are you seriously not gonna talk to him?”_

“I was about to, actually, then you called me. So I guess we’ll just talk now,” he mumbles, his right hand tracing the nonexistent pattern on his bedside table.

 _“Oh, no, no, don’t let me interrupt you,”_ she responds in exaggeratedly helpful voice.

“Yeah, well, I was planning to talk about how to break it to Dad and Mother, so–”

_“Nah, it’s cool. Go talk to him first. We’ll worry about that later.”_

He closes his eyes and pulls his phone away to soundlessly mouth ‘dammit’. His sister seems to know him too well not to recognize the signs that he’s trying to avoid the topic.

“But, Harper–”

_“I see what you’re doing, brother. You can’t change the subject. You’re calling him. Now.”_

“I’m trying.”

_“Okay, Nathan. You’re still not getting out of this.”_

He pulls at his hair in frustration. “It’s not that simple, Har–”

 _“To hell with ‘not that simple’. Go call him now,”_ she eventually commands, _“and no, you’re not getting away with just texting him. I’m serious. Do it now. I’m waiting.”_

He sighs, finally deciding that she has defeated him already. Whether he likes it or not, he’s going to call Matt.

“Okay. I’m gonna end this call, and I’ll call him.”

_“Promise?”_

“Yeah.”

_“Good. I’ll talk to you again in an hour to make sure you do that.”_

Then they say their goodbyes to each other before she hangs up.

He lets his hand fall listlessly to the bed with the phone. The screen shows the note app again, and he feels trepidation filling him when he sees it.

But he promised her. He’s a man of his words.

Or at least, he’d like to think he is.

* * *

He keeps looking at the clock on the wall. The needle clicks to the right every second.

Knowing his sister, Harper is probably really going to call him in 10 minutes to find out whether he is keeping his promise or not.

No, he hasn’t tried calling Matt, and no, he really doesn’t think he can. At least not within 10 minutes.

His phone vibrates to show he’s got a new text message.

_Running errand. I’m calling in a bit. Tell me good news baby bro._

Dammit.

Before he knows it, his hand has snatched his phone in lightning speed and he’s tapping the screen fast until it’s suddenly pressed onto his ear. He can hear the connecting repeating beeping that’s telling him he’s in the process of calling someone. When he pulls it away for a second, he sees the familiar photo of Matt with him kissing one cheek.

His heart softens a bit.

He might be calling because of the impending ‘debt collecting’ his sister is going to do, but god, he really does miss Matt.

He vaguely hears a click before registering that the ‘ _calling…’_ on the screen has turned to seconds counter. He puts the phone back against his ear.

_“Hello?”_

He instinctively sucks in a breath with a slowly spreading smile.

But then Nate narrows his eyes.

Nate hears rustling around like a confused person not understanding their surroundings. Also, when he thinks about it, the voice sounds a bit…slurred.

“Matt?”

He immediately hears a thud and something falling from the other end. His heart jumps up to his throat. Is Matt okay? What is wrong with him?

_“Nathan?”_

It sounds so shocked and almost choked as if Matt weren’t at all expecting him to ever call. He also sounds like…

Is he _drunk?!_

“Matt, are you okay?”

There is an unnaturally long pause before he gets an answer.

_“Uhhh…yeah. Yeah sure. I’m reaaal good right now.”_

“Matt, this is Monday morning. Don’t you have work?”

 _“Do I?”_ Matt giggles, _“Fuck, my head hurts.”_

Nate hears a loud flopping and creaking of bed. He’s guessing Matt either throws himself hard back onto the bed or he’s too wobbly to stand and falls, thankfully, to the bed.

_“I’m not, by the way. Drunk, I mean.”_

“Hmm.” Nate is not impressed.

_“But, I am…uh…hungover. Nasty, nasty hungover. Soooo, can’t work.”_

When Nate doesn’t respond, Matt talks again with even more noticeably slurred voice. “ _Did you know that, uh, my friend Jeff, he told me that I, downed, like, almost a, uhhh, whole bottle of that Pincer Vodka? Isn’t that–”_ he groans, _“–badass?”_

“When did you even come home last night?”

_“Uhhh, at 4? 5? I don’t know, an hour ago?”_

“Matt,” he admonishes sadly,

_“Why you care, anyway? Don’t you have, like, an ex-girlfriend to make out with?”_

So this is what it’s all about.

He rubs the bridge of his nose with closed eyes, frustrated. “It’s not like that.”

_“Hmm. Sure.”_

“Matt, Sienna already has a boyfriend.”

 _“Great, then. You can have a threesome with them. I mean, you’re–”_ Matt groans painfully again, _“–you’re bi. So…”_

“Look, just take some aspirin and drink lots of water and sleep it off. Call your boss first. Maybe in the evening I’ll call you again.”

He hears a lazy humming which he doesn’t know whether it means Matt is agreeing or just placating him so that he’ll shut up.

“Can you call your sister to your place to take care of you? I mean, Berkeley isn’t that far, right?”

_“Hussh. Fuck off. I’ve drunk often. I don’t need to be babied.”_

“I’m worried about you.”

_“Oh, that’s cute.”_

By that point, he’s decided that Matt isn’t in the best state to talk to. So he repeats his instruction again to hydrate himself and take some painkillers before sleeping. It stings when the only response he gets is another non-committal humming, so he just ends the call instead.

He’s really done with this back-and-forth one sided silence treatment. Clearly, it’s only hurting them both.

* * *

Harper made good on her promise to call him to verify that he has indeed called his boyfriend, although she was disappointed on his behalf that it didn’t turn out as well and as romantic as they thought (and he hoped) it was going to be. She said that it’s okay, because at least he tried.

Few hours later, Ellie calls him because apparently Harper told her about her own conversation with him.

_“Don’t worry, Nate. She only told me. She didn’t tell Dad or Mother, or Celia.”_

He breathes out relieved sigh.

_“Look. I know I wasn’t the best sister growing up, but I feel like it’s unfair that I have to hear it from Harper first. Who lives in Manhattan. Instead of hearing from you directly.”_

He is about to argue, but Ellie is apparently not done yet.

_“I mean it. There were tons of opportunities for you to tell me when we went to each other’s place. We are like, only an hour drive from each other, in L.A traffic standard of course, so it’s not far. And we’re both Omegas. If anything, you should have told me first.”_

Yeah, okay. He gets it. He should have told people earlier. Can people stop dishing out that overused line on him now when they find out?

“Okay. I’m sorry. Are you happy now?”

Ellie just stays silent. He sighs out tiredly, and he apologizes more sincerely.

After talking to her and filling her in on what she doesn’t know yet, they end the call with the promise that he’s not going to keep anything about the pregnancy anymore from her. She also tells him that she’ll be there if he needs anything. Which is good.

Few minutes later when he’s about to start booking a plane ticket and a hotel room, mood plummeting further than the hopeful state it was before _that_ one particular call, his phone vibrates again to tell him he’s got a text message from Sienna. She says he needs to log in to his Skype.

He groans.

It turns out that it’s a group video call.

Jeanne and Jack are in one frame, while Sienna is alone in another.

He’s not even sure what they talk about, especially with him forgetting to talk about the notorious photo of her on his lap and about whether there’s a problem with her boyfriend or not, but he does remember almost flipping his MacBook in fury when Sienna says they all told Roderick about his…thing.

_“Hey, calm down. He’s a doctor. He knows about patient confidentiality and shit. He isn’t an asshole. Besides, I was just asking him if he knows anything about Omega male biology. And he guessed it.”_

He massages the bridge of his nose again for seemingly a hundredth of time that day to relieve the pulsating pressure and headache caused by his frustration.

 _“Calm down, Nathan. It’s not the end of the world. Nothing bad is gonna happen,”_ she assures him.

Then they have the audacity to giggle.

 _“Okay, yeah. Sorry. We won’t say it to anyone else, ever. Scout’s honor,”_ Jeanne says.

Without waiting whether he’s okay with it or not, they continue talking again.

 _“Anyway, did you know that there is this equivalence of flat earth theory drama in medical world, but it’s about Omega male? He hears a lot from the other residents and attending physicians,”_ Sienna says, opening her phone to do god knows what. _“Apparently, there was a baby boy born in New York around 1994, and the doctors kept like tight-lipped about it, but literally almost everyone suspected there was peculiarity with this boy.”_

 _“Wait, 1994, New York? Isn’t that like when and where you were born?”_ Jack asks.

 _Yes. It’s probably me, now can we all shut up,_ is all he can think about when he hears it. But then Sienna clicks away and types fast on her own laptop, again doing whatever, and they all forget about the question. She then spends the next hour spewing out and explaining the ancient 5000 BCE scriptures she took picture of from the high security clearance part of Yale’s library.

“Alumni privilege,” she brags cheekily, “though of course, I can’t borrow them.”

Then she goes back to animatedly discussing the scriptures which apparently talk about the existence of Omega males (and Omegas in general) as actually the dominant part of ancient societies back then. The scriptures say that Omegas, be it male (which were apparently abundant in old civilizations, according to the scripture) or females, were actually more revered and considered far more superior than Betas and Alphas, and they occupied higher standing and positions in ancient governments. Yet, for whatever reason, the civilizations had a major social shift that threw Omegas to the bottom along with the stern labelling that they’re the weakest. Omega males were also nowhere in sight by the end of the scriptures.

If it were in any other time, he would be excited and smug about it. As it is, he can only listen with half the mind how they bicker about which type is the most superior. Sienna says that the scriptures cannot be proven to be true or correctly translated (yet), and Jack says, “Ha! They ended up in the ditch anyway!” while Jeanne says, “Well, there’s a reason why those scriptures exist!”

Nate really can’t care less.

When they’re done debating and finally realize that he doesn’t really say much or is that interested in the discussion at all, they decide to end the call with a ‘Good luck with the single release 6 days from now!’ cheerily as if they haven’t just been crapping on each other’s typesign for an hour.

Without nothing else to distract him and to be used as an excuse, his trepidation comes back when he looks at his phone. There is one more person he’s still not talking to properly right now. Why can’t this one be as easy as his reunion with people he literally have not been in contact with for years?

_You’re a giant idiot who insists on making everything more complicated that necessary…_

Yeah, that’s why it’s hard for him to fix it, isn’t it?

All he needs to do is just call him and talk, dammit. It’s not that hard.

Or maybe it is. Otherwise, Matt wouldn’t be talking rudely to him in hungover manner before.

But still, on Wednesday, he’s still going to have to see Matt. The least he can do right now is just talk as civilly as possible about the necessary stuff, the prenatal visit, then he can just, he doesn’t know, continue living as if he doesn’t have a partner?

Yeah, just that. Just call him and keep it as briefly as possible.

So he does, even with sweaty and shaking hands, heart racing though not in a good way, and dread that he’s going to get another disastrous response as he waits for the call to be picked up.

Before he knows it, he hears a timid _“Nate? Hey.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (feel free to skip this but I wanna recommend the song _Runnin' Home to You_ by Grant Gustin/Barry Allen and Ylvis' songs _Stonehenge, Jan Egeland, Intolerant_ and basically any other song by them other than just _The Fox (or What Does the Fox Say)_. They're cool as hell, okay?)
> 
> (also, The Long Leash is going on hiatus again until next year ;____;)


	15. Chapter XIV: Some Thing Getting-used-tos

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another (late) chapter, which hasn't been edited that much. So, maybe next week I'll revamp this chapter.
> 
> Lemme know what you think, and enjoy!

“So here’s the result that I told you about.”

Dr. Florence slides two envelopes on top of each other to them on the desk.

They both look at the envelopes slightly before looking at each other with unreadable expression. Well, Matt’s is to him. But it’s probably because they both don’t know how to feel.

He doesn’t want to feel vindictive again amidst the cold and uneasy distance that still settle between them, but it’s hard when it reminds him again why they took the test.

Even yesterday when Matt picked him up from the airport and drove to his (their? Only Matt’s? Nate still has the keys, but who knows?) apartment, they still didn’t really talk to each other. It wasn’t even him who wanted to just stay at the apartment as usual instead of booking a hotel room. Matt told him to when they were on the phone on Monday.

He should have just stayed at a hotel like on the second prenatal visit. At least he would have a huge bed all to himself instead of having to inch closer to the queen sized bed’s edge until he almost fell last night. Not to mention, he had to deal with Matt’s annoyed huff and eye-rolling right when he walked in from the door after his evening class when Matt saw him texting Sienna about today’s prenatal visit.

 _“What’s with that attitude, I’m just telling her about the babies just to catch up,”_ Nate told him.

Matt responded with sarcastic _“Yeah, right,”_ while opening the fridge and taking a beer bottle then proceeded to ignore him until they both went to bed. How he wished he could just drink his sorrow away too last night.

Nate doesn’t even drink, but last night really made him consider changing that.

Matt audibly sighs and gulps, pulling him out of the memory.

“So, there’s nothing abnormal with the babies, right?” he asks.

Dr. Florence cocks her head to the side a little with narrowed eyes. “Don’t you want to see the results first?”

“I mean, if there’s anything pressing we need to know, you would have told us to come right away when your office called.”

“Yes, but I was under the impression you’d like to know _more_ than just if there are potential genetic abnormalities in your babies,” she says meaningfully.

Matt hangs his head slightly as if feeling ashamed. “I…changed my mind.”

She gives him contemplative look before looking at Nate. There is no doubt that she noticed they weren’t any less distant when they came in today than on the visit where he did the CVS test. Maybe she is questioning why the change now when they still seemed to prefer not to be with each other few minutes ago.

“Nevertheless, that’s the paternity test and the chromosomal screening test result. You are welcome to read them to see for yourself. The paternity one is on the top, in case you’re wondering.”

Matt seems to take a long time just looking at both envelopes, which makes his own mind runs amok. He’s feeling a mixture of dread (which doesn’t make sense because why would he be worried? He knows whose babies are inside him,) irritation, feeling of hurt and anger that he was doubted in the first place, and resignation. He decides to look straight, away from the envelopes.

After a long time, Matt surprisingly slides the top envelope to the side and takes the bottom one instead. Nate can see Dr. Florence widening her eyes slightly before her expression turns into that of a masked satisfaction. It’s as if she’s proud of Matt’s decision to throw aside the paternity test.

Matt rips open the CVS test envelope to take out the letter inside, unfolding while slightly angling the paper to him as if to invite him to read it together.

He doesn’t know why but that simple gesture seems to melt away at least part of the tension inside him that has been building up regarding them both. He feels like he can cry out of relief and gradually shift all of the hurdle and walls between them away, and finally…just, finally, the yearning within him can now start to meet Matt’s halfway.

It’s not huge, but it’s something.

So he raises his hand slightly to hold the other corner of the paper and leans a bit towards Matt, signaling his own willingness to reconciliation.

After reading the letter together, he looks up to face Matt.

Matt is already looking at him with an unsure but hopeful smile. “No abnormalities.”

“Yeah, they’re healthy,” he agrees.

They consult to her, asking her about the information and various genetic codes printed there to confirm their understanding, and in the end, they’re well assured that their babies are as normal as they could be.

“Although we need to check with the ultrasound to make sure of their current condition of course,” she ends her explanation.

She gestures him to move to the corner of the room where there is a scale. She looks a bit disappointed at him and admonishes him softly again like she did 3 weeks ago when she notices the number getting even lower again from 164 pounds to 160 pounds with his six feet two height. Matt just looks sad and guilty. Then she tells him to go to the bed and lie down to prepare for the ultrasound, so he sighs out of relief for the change of topic.

“So, in normal pregnancy, you’re supposed to be exactly 12 weeks, right?”

He nods.

“All right. I’ve made a table of progress comparison with the data from two previous visits, so the third one will be the last confirmation to see if my calculations for the speed and the due date are correct.”

“Okay,” he mumbles.

He doesn’t realize Matt’s hand creeping up to his hand until he feels a soft touch above his own clenching one. He is a bit surprised, so he jolts up slightly, pulling the attention of the other three people in the room. He feels kind of disappointed when Matt decides to draw his hand back. He wants to say that it’s actually nice to be held, but oh well.

As usual, he pulls up the hem of his sweater while unbuttoning his jeans and pushing them down a little with the blushing tendency that never seems to improve. He thanks the sonographer in his mind for putting the gel on him so that he can focus on the cold sensation instead of the fact that two random woman have seen his dick and slightly shaved groin three times already.

“Right, so that is baby number one, and that–” the sonographer rolls the scanner a bit to the other side of his lower (and visibly bulging) stomach as Dr. Florence points at the screen, “–is baby number two.” Both she and Dr. Florence smile at the ultrasound.

“Let’s see how far along they are in your standard,” Dr. Florence says as she begins to observe the size of the babies with the sonographer.

Both Matt and Nate look at the screen and at them both nervously.

“So, baby number one is around 3.4 inches,” the sonographer tells them with a nod from Dr. Florence, “And the other one is 3.6 inches. So around half a centimeter difference.”

“How old would that be?” Matt asks.

“They look about 13 weeks and 5 days.”

“So almost 14 weeks,” he concludes.

“Yes, which means that you’re now officially on the second trimester already. So, congratulation,” Dr. Florence says to him as the sonographer wipes his stomach clean and finishes up the ultrasound. He smiles lightly then dresses himself back before swinging his legs to the side of the bed.

Once again, he notices Matt’s hand slowly moves to his waist, and he acts as neutral as possible as to not draw attention to it and make him change his mind again.

As they both sit on the two seats in front of her desk again, she types something on the computer screen before turning it a little to let them see.

“So, the first visit on October 4th was supposed to be 5 weeks,” she explains as she points at the appropriate number, “but the fetal progress seems to be around 5 weeks and 4 days.”

Only Matt nods, while he opts to not react as it still leaves a bad taste in his mouth to remember it.

“Then on the second visit right after Halloween, which was supposed to be 9 weeks, the fetal progress looks about 10 weeks and 2 days,” she looks at them both a little, “then I told you both to come here every 3 weeks instead of every 4 weeks from then on because I know this demands more closely monitoring.”

 _Yeah, and you also put those spawn of satan metals into me that day_ , he thinks bitterly. He closes his eyes and tells himself to just move on already.

“Now, on November 22nd, which is supposed to be 12 weeks, your babies seem 13 weeks and 5 days along,” she continues, seemingly oblivious to his internal musing. She then shifts her finger to the other side of the long table on the screen.

“So from this calculation, instead of reaching full term in 40 weeks like regular pregnancy, yours would most likely reach full term in only 35 weeks, which means your due date is on May 2nd 2018.”

“In less than eight months?” Matt asks confusedly.

“It seems so, but I’m guessing your famous boyfriend right here would be happy with less time being encumbered with tiny humans inside him and shortened break that he has to take from Hollywood, would you?” she jokes.

When he just smiles slightly, she frowns.

“You _are_ taking a break, right?”

Oh, awesome. Another upcoming lecture. Who else is there in line to give him more lectures?

“Don’t worry. I’m planning it.”

He hopes his Oscar-winning smile and ability to act will actually keep her from actually lecturing him too. Otherwise, he might as well just throw away his tiny golden statue because it clearly isn’t useful when he needs it the most.

“ _Nathan_ , you..”

All right, he’s going to set a reminder to throw it away later when he gets back to L.A.

* * *

_So how was the doctor visit my boy_

He smiles at the text from Sienna. With right hand holding his ice cream, he types away fast using his left hand.

_theyre gonna arrive on may 2 nd next year!!!!!_

Not even 10 seconds later, he gets another message.

_what???? really???? omg ur gonna have cute lil babies in 5 months!!!!! :D_

They keep texting back and forth about the baby progress, with even Jeanne and Jack joining in too after Sienna told them about the news. His smiles grows wider as he keeps going.

He is pulled out of his oblivious joy when he notices a slight movement on his peripheral vision, and when he looks at his side, Matt is pointedly looking away with slightly upset expression.

“Are you jealous?” he asks before taking a huge bite out of his ice cream and wincing at the cold. He needs to remind himself to slow down with his eating habit just because his nausea is getting better lately.

Matt doesn’t answer.

“Matt?”

They continue walking in their ice cream reconciliation date for a while before Matt inhales deeply. “What do you think?”

_do u know that the C-list bitch whos auditioning for Lila role from my book adaptation is caught with enticement perfume_

Nate raises an eyebrow as he catches the text on his screen before looking at Matt again.

“Look, Matt. Nothing is going on between me and her. We just haven’t seen each other for almost 5 years, so she was a bit…excited when we met each other again,” he explains with the most sincere-looking face he can conjure up before surreptitiously trying to type on his phone again to reply Sienna.

_yeah the casting director told me and dumped her from the list, good for her cuz aint no racist & typcist bitch is gonna play my character_

He snorts out.

Matt huffs out an annoyed sigh when he does that, so he rolls his eyes and stuffs his phone back into his pocket.

“Look, Matt. I really don’t want to fight with you again, especially for the same reason.”

Matt narrows his eyes incredulously before preparing to argue, but Nate beats him to it.

“Yes, it is for the same reason. Didn’t you notice? You have possessiveness issue–and probably controlling issue too, but who knows–without logically thinking about the situation.”

Matt looks down almost embarrassedly. He just stares at his ice cream, so Nate continues talking.

“We wouldn’t be fighting for almost two months and giving each other cold shoulder if you actually rationally thought about why the babies might be growing faster compared to normal pregnancy,” he licks his ice cream to cool himself, “and you probably wouldn’t be hungover on Monday or be pissed with me for texting Sienna.”

“Why do you think my hungover has anything to do with it?”

Nate rolls his eyes again. “Because, ‘ _Why you care, anyway? Don’t you have, like, an ex-girlfriend to make out with?’_ ” he quotes, “And who even drinks a whole bottle of vodka on Sunday night before work the next day anyway?”

“I didn’t,” Matt mumbles.

“What’s that?”

“I didn’t,” Matt tells him more firmly, “Drink the whole bottle, I mean. Jeff took it from me and forced me to the uber he ordered that night so that I would go home.”

“Yeah, still almost a whole bottle of liquor with alcohol content so high it’s borderline illegal. And why? Because of a picture without context and background information?”

Matt just stays silent.

“Are you gonna be mad at me again when I have to kiss my co-stars? Or the model in my music videos? You better not watch _Rainbow Butterflies_ from last year then.”

Again, no response.

“You signed up for this when you asked me out, Matt. I can’t keep worrying whether you’re gonna have some kind of an anger management issue or drink yourself to death each time you’re jealous. If you’re not ready for it then maybe we shouldn’t be in relationship to begin with. Or be a father to my kids.”

Oh god, he sounds pretentiously like a middle-aged single mother to her date.

“Look, okay, I’m sorry. I’m never gonna be like that again, I promise. Besides, it’s not like I’m like that often. Just–” Matt gulps, “–about the pregnancy.”

“So it’s all after you discovered that I’m an Omega, huh?”

“What? No!”

“Are you sure?”

Matt opens his mouth to argue, but closes them again and bites his lips.

“Thought so,” Nate says bitterly, “This is why I don’t wanna tell people what type I am. They always think I’m suddenly less than who I was when they didn’t know about it. It’s also like that with Vincent, you know?”

Matt looks a bit offended. “I’m nothing like him.”

“Really? How do I know you’re not gonna be like two months ago again, then?”

Matt runs his hand through his hair and grunts in frustration.

“I don’t know, okay? I don’t know how to convince you! But I’m sorry, I really am. I promise this is the last time I’m gonna be like this. And I don’t think of you as less than me or something just because you’re Omega.”

“That’s what Alphas say.”

“Not all Alphas.”

He rolls his eyes. “See? You even give me that ‘Not all Alphas’ line instead of actually owning up the fact that your kind has a problem and actually _trying_ to solve that problem.”

“What do you want me to do, then? Preach door to door to all my fellow Alphas like some kind of a Jehovah’s Witness missionary?”

They keep quiet after that.

“Look, Nate, I’m sorry, okay? Maybe I have some kind of bias towards Omega, and Beta too, but I was just mostly shocked because I didn’t know people like you exist,” Matt explains hesitantly, “And the typcist behavior, I mean you can’t completely blame me for that. If you grow up with my family, it’s hard not to internalize these things. I’m trying my best to unlearn those bullshit, okay?”

When Nate glares at him with hand flying to his stomach, Matt mumbles a tiny ‘sorry’.

“Speaking of which,” Matt starts again, pulling Nate’s attention back.

“What?” he asks.

“Uh, I’m going home tomorrow for Thanksgiving with my family.”

“Oh.”

Another silence ensues.

“I mean, I’m gonna go from my place at ten in the morning, but if you need me to drive you, I’ll just go after I take you to SFO. Or are you going back today?”

He doesn’t answer for a while.

“Nate?”

He bites his lips hesitantly. “I didn’t book a return ticket.”

Matt turns to him questioningly. “What?”

“I didn’t book a return ticket,” he mumbles again even more quietly.

“I thought you’re only here for the doctor visit,” Matt says.

“Uh, yeah, but you asked me to stay at the apartment instead, so I thought…” he trails off, and he thinks that maybe he read the situation wrong this whole time. Maybe even two weeks ago when Nate threw his bitchy attitude, Matt never meant to invite him to go with him to the Thanksgiving celebration in the first place.

Oh no. He did read the situation wrong, didn’t he?

“Really?” Matt asks, disbelieving.

He doesn’t really reply. He doesn’t want to humiliate himself and act like a clingy, demanding, stereotypically ‘Omega’ even more. People has got enough reason to crap on his kind.

“Nate, wait, really? You want to go with me to my family’s Thanksgiving?”

He just looks straight ahead and licks his ice cream continuously faster.

“Are you sure? I mean, I was about to ask you to come with me two weeks ago, but I thought you didn’t want to.”

He immediately breathes out a relieved sigh.

“If you want.”

When he looks at Matt after replying that, he sees Matt’s lips tilting up into a smile, although he stops it halfway as to not seem too excited or crazy.

Which is stupid. Nate will be happy if his boyfriend is happy with bringing him to family meal.

“But, look, my family, they’re kind of…” Matt shrugs.

“What?”

Matt swallows the last bit of cone that is left, before inhaling. “My parents are like the sore thumb in the generally liberal population in California, okay?”

Nate bites his own ice cream before finally following suit with eating the last bite of the cone.

“I mean, they’re not that conservative and extreme, but they still prefer it if I can suddenly turn myself straight.”

Nate snorts.

“I know, right? I’m like the gayest of the gays. They’re gonna have better luck wishing for a flying pig–” Matt smiles back at him, “–with, you know, CGI and current aviation technology.”

Nate laughs out loud at that.

“Anyway, it’s not just my parents. There will be my other really pasty white relatives who are like so confederate-adoring and Alpha-Beta-Omega traditional dynamic-loving. Even my parents are liberal in their standard.”

He winces slightly, although he instinctively straightens up.

“Would they really dare being disrespectful to me, though?” he asks, smirking.

Matt raises an eyebrow.

“I mean, I’m the only Leighton son, and I’d like to think even I’m influential enough without riding on my dad’s coattail.”

Matt shrugs, agreeing. “I mean, yeah, even if you’re not white or Alpha, they probably still won’t talk shit in front of you. You’re probably gonna be the only person I bring home who won’t have to endure that.”

“See, there’s no problem then,” he says cheerily.

Still, as he looks at Matt, his boyfriend looks unsure.

“What?”

Matt turns to him.

“To be honest, in this case, my family isn’t what I’m worried about the most.”

What is that supposed to mean?

Matt just gives him a sheepish look.

“My little sister, however…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the record, I have nothing against any religion. I've just been told quite often that there are a lot of... pushy door-to-door missionaries, regardless of what their religious affiliation are. It's just that JW and Mormon are the most well-known (I think, correct me if I'm wrong tho)


	16. INTERMISSION ANNOUNCEMENT

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *apologies in advance if you're subscribed and you get multiple emails about me updating, there was some uploading error*

**THIS IS NOT A CHAPTER, OKAY?**

Good, now that that’s out of the way, I want to first apologize because I’m a horrible human being who have abandoned you all three times in horribly progressively longer durations without any news whatsoever. Even this should have been posted like _months_ ago, not just now, but hey, better late than never, right?

The thing is no matter how I word it, it’s still going to be an awful excuse, so I’m just gonna be honest; I had terrible case of writer’s block and creative fatigue (is that a thing? Or am I the first to say it?). That’s not really the whole reason (May was finals month last semester, June was Ramadhan and Eid time so I gotta focus on spirituality and religious stuff, and July was family reunion time slash planned annual holiday), but for the most part that was why I had horrible time churning out chapters.

Most of the time before AO3, I wrote for myself and it was absolutely fine when I went through my creative fatigue period, but since I have basically bullied myself into involving the internet as my audience, I have been feeling awful guilt eating me up these last few months, and that’s where the important announcement is going to come in.

So, as a way to fulfill a pact I had with my own self to _finish the_ _goddamn story_ (because fun fact, I actually _have_ written several chapters near the ending and even a bit of the epilogue before I started posting here, it’s the middle parts that’s a f*cking nuisance to write), I will be  coming off my hiatus on **September**. Just think of the next chapter as the first episode of NEMT’s second season, ‘cause that’s renewed TV shows’ primetime re-airing period.

I haven’t set an exact date yet, but most likely after my 21st birthday (which is mid-September).

Why?

No reason. Just feel like a good life ‘checkpoint’, y’know?

Now, although I haven’t set an exact date, I will, however, give you a rough idea on when to expect the next chapter. This announcement chapter is going to be deleted later in September, and once it _is_ deleted, you can safely expect **at most a week after that** for a new chapter.

For now, I’m gonna finish writing the hell out of this story, at least the rough draft until the epilogue, so that I won’t pull off any runaway-dad nonsense again. I’m going to work hard so that I won’t be behind my chapter child-support payment anymore. Wish me luck, okay?

Oh, and, remember few chapters back when I said that this story is the omegaverse ‘fanfiction’ of my original characters’ lives with the names changed? What do you think of me uploading the original version? Are you guys interested in seeing that? It won’t be, like, a straight timeline plot-based story, but more of a series of random timeline-points oneshots. Maybe you’d like to see how the characters are supposed to be originally when not in omegaverse world. Maybe not. Let me know.

(I would make a fanfiction announcement too here, but I don’t think my fanfic readers actually read NEMT, but hey, whatever still. For those who want to see the next part of _Well, Hello to You Too_ , the rough time for next part upload is the same as NEMT next chapter upload time.)

Have a nice day!

**EDIT 18/09/17: Slight miscalculation. Will be back around mid October. Sorry ._.v**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tl;dr I’m sorry for abandoning you guys for months. I’m on break until mid-September.
> 
> **EDIT 18/09/17: Slight miscalculation. Will be back around mid October. Sorry ._.v**


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